as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. by far the worst affected country is the united states, with more than 125,000 deaths. the governor of texas warns infections have taken a "swift and very dangerous turn". exit polls in poland's presidential election show incumbent andrzej duda is in the lead but doesn't have the votes to win outright. mr duda, a socially conservative right—winger, is projected to have won just under forty—two percent of the ballots. a second round will be held in two weeks‘ time. police in hong kong have arrested 53 people who were taking part in a protest against national security legislation that will soon be imposed on the territory. beijing is preparing to pass new laws following a year of protests. activists fear the laws will destroy long held freedoms.

now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. it is the job of the professional satirist to find the funny and expose the absurd in humanity's most serious endeavours. there are times where satire just doesn't work, should we be laughing at covid—19 or racial discrimination? 0ur guest today is a hugely successful writer and director of comedy on television and film, armando iannucci. is there ever a bad time and place to be funny? armando iannucci, welcome to hardtalk. hello.

good to have you on the show at a very difficult time. ijust wonder, with reference to coronavirus and everything else that is happening right now, do you need to be in a certain frame of mind to write, and in particular, to write funny? i mean, that's interesting. i mean, it's good, i've got some structure to the day because we're actually in the middle of writing a new series of avenue 5, which is the sci—fi comedy we do for hbo, but on the other hand, that show‘s premise is about 6,500 people being trapped in a spaceship that they can't get out of, and suffering a fundamental lack of leadership, and it's very difficult under these circumstances to feel — i can certainly empathise with them, but it's very difficult to see the funny side of it because it is so real and so kind of current at the moment. yeah, and i asked the question partly because i feel you've been

quite honest in recent things you've said in public, and i'm just going to quote one where you said, "do people really want gags from someone like me who is, right now, running low on good cheer?" yeah, i mean, it's been a hard time for everyone, and i think a lot of good has come out of the lockdown in terms of the higher profile and importance we now see with care workers and people on the front line. it's given everyone a time to sort ofjust step back from the craziness of the world and assess everything. but it has been hard. people have been dying, people have been falling dangerously ill. i think every family — mine has — every family has been affected by it and touched by it. and i don't necessarily see myjob, if i even think of it as a job, as someone who has to wake up every morning, and the first thing i say to myself is, "what should i make fun of today?" i don't really... i've never seen it as that. i've always felt that what you do as a writer or someone who works

in comedy is to write about what makes you passionate, what makes you enthusiastic, what makes you angry, what makes you frustrated, all these things. some of stirs something in you and it's that. and that article you quoted from was me really two or three weeks since the lockdown just reflecting on how, actually, now — or then may not have been the time to do lots and lots of funny stuff about the predicament we were in. i think as 13, 14 weeks have gone on, i think we are now beginning to get a handle on what has worked and what hasn't worked. yeah, no, that's interesting, because i think i and many people associate you with being a great willingness to go into the darker corners of the human experience and to find humour in places where most of us wouldn't even dare look, and i'm thinking of everything from the iraq war to the machinations of political process to — and we'll talk about it in more detail later — the death of stalin.

you find the funny in the weirdest places. so, could you not find it in covid—i9? i think my instinct was really that it will come when it comes. i think we're so immersed in it and i think the ones who are finding the funny are the ones who actually, strangely enough, have a much more journalistic bank to their comedy, people likejohn 0liver who has a whole team of researchers and factual researchers as well, investigative researchers, and he turns that knowledge and that factual information into something funny. and if he does it so well, i don't see that's where i fit in. i think, yes, of course i'll end up doing something about it, but i think i need that moment to suddenly arrive, and also, things are changing so rapidly, that any dramatic reconstruction of what's happening now, ithink, by the time it is ready, it will be infinitely out of date. i think things will have moved on so much.

politics is going through such a crazy tumble dryer period at the moment where things are crashing around and changing all the time that i think you are more... i predict you would have a higher success rate, i think, if you're doing something on a daily or a weekly basis, really. what i do notice about your focus at the moment is often in terms of twitter, in your public profile, you're writing very serious things, you're not trying to be funny, you're actually making some very serious points, not least about the dangers faced by the creative industries from theatres to your own film and tv business by what has come with covid—i9, including all of the lockdown measures, the social distancing, the impossibility to fill theatres and live venues, at least indoors. do you really think that this is something, all of us, whether we're connected to the entertainment business or not, have to care about?

absolutely, and i find it is very difficult, i know, to plead for money for the arts because, inevitably, you say what about hospitals, what about schools, and so on, but economically, just looking at the uk, which is my prime argument, they're going to be the last thing to open up just because they involve large performance bases and large numbers of people. they're expensive to run, but because they're going to be the last things to open up, the ones in most danger of shutting down for good. and if you think, first of all, how much... oh, there goes part of my... i don't have... retrack ten seconds. if you think about how much culture and the arts has sustained us through the lockdown, the fact that every day we are reading new books, we're watching more on netflix or on streaming services or on the bbc or on the iplayer, we're downloading, we're looking at art, you know,

how much they get us through, so they're that important, but also, economically, i did a speech for a festival about four or five years ago, and i was researching the figures, and the creative industries in the uk contribute more to our national gdp than the oil and car industry put together. and yet it's very easy, i think, for a government minister to support the car industry or to support the energy industry, to support aviation, to support tourism, and i think they find it difficult — i don't know whether it's is a very british thing — that it's somehow, it's slightly too clever for your own good, too hifalutin to support the arts and culture, but it's so crucial to the economy. it thing to me that right now, that there's a crisis of confidence in your business, and i'm particularly thinking actually of comedy, whether it be live comedy or the sorts of comedy on tv and film that you do, crisis of confidence isn'tjust borne out of the post—corona economic issues that the industry faces, but also, questions

and issues of identity and what comedy is really for and what it's allowed to be, and i'm thinking particularly of the debates that have arisen in recent weeks post the killing of george floyd in the united states, about race and comedy, and you will have seen, just as we all have, that the bbc, for example, has gotten itself into a bit of a mess, taking an edition fawlty towers, for exa m ple, off one of its streaming services for a while because it was deemed to be causing too much offence because of racial stereotyping and offence that it could have caused. as a very senior voice in comedy in the uk right now, what do you make of what is happening? you make me sound like some company board member or... the voice of comedy speaks. no, i mean, it's interesting. each one of those examples, and there was something similar with hbo max taking

gone with the wind off — in the end, those programmes and that film came back on, but they came back with an explanation as to why some people might find elements within it offensive or placing it within a historical context, and i think it's important that we don't do a kind ofjerk reaction, a nervous reaction and diss everything from the past. i think there's an understanding in most people that attitudes, language, behaviour, tolerance was very different 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 100 years ago. and for me, what i'm more concerned with is less what we do about stuff we made in the past, because i think those debates will flare up and then disappear within three or four days, on each specific example. i think what's more fundamental, what's more important is what we do going forward. i've had a film come out in the uk, the personal history of david copperfield, which is now being released internationally, in which david copperfield is played by dev patel, and it interested me that quite

a lot of people initially, before seeing the film, would pick up on that as an example of, strangely, the phrase is "colour—blind casting , " which i find slightly negative and limiting as a phrase. for me, ijust chose dev patel because he, for me, was the actor who most represented what i saw in the character of david copperfield, his sort of energy and his appetite for life and his delight and imagination and everything, and i couldn't have imagined making the film with anyone else. but then once i cast david, i then asked myself, "how do i cut everyone else?" well, i should cast the way i cast david. just find the actor who best inhabits the spirit of that character irrespective of their background, ethnicity. i just want the best actor. i want — why should i not be able to choose from 100% of the acting talent available to me? that is a great cue, armando, for us just to play a very short clip from the david copperfield

movie that, as you say, is now going to be seen around the world. it's so interesting that you have put out there a movie, which, frankly, charles dickens, when he wrote it, would not have imagined david copperfield would look like a man of south asian origin, but that, you say, is the precisely the point that this is about common humanity and that colour doesn't matter. let's have a look at the clip. mr dick! mr dick, mr dick! mr dick! is it lunch? no, there's troubling thoughts from king charles. they wear you down. yes, i try and keep them in order, but they do pile up and oppress me. as i die, i move from a corruptible crown to... no, no, no, mr dick, we can release them! we can cast them to the wind. i can't say that i am feeling much better. you have to fly it first. come on! kite time! lead on, lead on!

up, up, up! fly, fly! steady, steady! i can't believe it! this sky is absorbing my words! the higher the words go... the clearer my mind becomes! oh, i haven't felt like this... it's as if i'm reading for the bar again. before everything... i used to share a staircase with tommy traddles who was a terrific fellow. speaks french. well, now, there's a thing — i'd completely forgotten that i can...| can speak french! how far can your approach to find the common humanity and to cast in a way that leaves aside issues of skin colour — how far can that go? i mean, ijust read the other day that ian mckellen, in his 80s, is going to play hamlet, usually regarded as a part for a young man perhaps in his 20s, as the young prince. how far can this notion that you're

seeking something beyond the obvious in characterisation — how far can it go? i mean, everything — you remember the all male swan lake and there have been all—female shakespeare productions ofjulius caesar, and no—one i think is saying that that one way they are making it should be the norm for every production or every film or every programme. i think these examples are just stating, especially with old works, adaptations of things that are very well known, that there are always new and fresh and interesting ways of interpreting it, there are always new and fresh ways of putting on a production that just opens people's eyes and ears to something new and it allows people to see something new in it. for me, reading david copperfield — i've been a huge fan of charles dickens all my life. what always appealed to me was, first of all, dickens's humour, which is not something that is conveyed in some

of the adaptations. very often i think people grow up with the idea that dickens wrote about mud and fog and death and crime and that was it, and he's a very, very funny writer. i want to return to the idea of offence in comedy and satire and where the lines are. because one of your big hits of recent years was the movie the death of stalin, which did extraordinarily well and got great reviews but it struck me that if you had even suggested to investors in the movie industry that you wanted to make a movie about the death of hitler that was going to be full of knockabout comedy involving goering, goebbels, hess and others, they would probably have laughed you out of the room. why is it that one of the great mass murderers of the 20th century can be made fun of, albeit with serious undertones, but made fun of in a movie of yours and not actually cause offence to potentially millions of people across the former soviet union? you have to do it with great care

and when we started on the film i said to cast, crew, everyone that we have to be respectful of what actually happened to people in the soviet union at the time. and the treatment of them in the gulags and in the torture places and the enormous amount of deaths. i wanted to treat it honestly and directly and not make fun of it. the comedy came from the characters in the kremlin. the absurdity of their position where they each felt they had to stick to a line because anyone who departed from the line could be shot but no—one knew what the line was. that struck me is where the comedy is — the consequences of the decisions they make in that bubble that have real and tragic effects to people outside. but to be clear about the line because it is fascinating. could you, do you believe you could have made the same kind of film about the last days of hitler?

i point you towards jojo rabbit, which did. i point you to the great dictator, one of charlie chaplin's greatest films, made and released in 1941, when everyone knew, but so much more was to be known about the menace of hitler. and what charlie chaplin did there was some of his funniest most inventive comic routines, sitting next to very straight and very dramatic scenes set in thejewish ghetto. and i always said that you do not belittle a subject by making it the subject of comedy. comedy allows you to come at something from an unexpected, unpredictable, unusual angle and allows you to get closer, sometimes, to a subject than you might do if you were going through much more natural drama. it just allows you... i did a a lot of research for the death of stalin and we went to moscow and spoke to people who grew up under stalin who told us that everyone had to pack a suitcase

and have it by the door because if you were dragged out in the middle of the night to the gulag you could grab your suitcase with you and you had something to take. they went to bed with layers and layers of clothes on so if they were dragged out and taken to siberia they had lots of warm clothing. and they all said the only way to do it is through comedy because it's the absurdity of what was happening. everyone knew what was stupid — what was going on — and they told me of the existence of stalin joke books with terrible sickjokes about stalin and the gulags and so on. and if a neighbour heard you tell one of these jokes and reported you, you could be shot and yet they said you still had to be able to joke. it is as if they were saying that stalin could take my family, my liberty and my livelihood but if i can still make fun of him, he has not taken my brain and my conscience. if you look back over a long career delving into dark and difficult corners, are there things you regret

that you've done that you now think with the cultural values of right now, that you think "i wouldn't do that again." as i say, you know, language changes, attitudes change and i can think of a sketch i did about 20 years ago about racist police horses. it was the horses, they expressed racism. and i spoke — we worked with the actors and i said what phrases are used against you, and we had the absurdity of these horses spouting quite offensive language that then became a bit more distorted and illogical. i have not looked back on it, but i suspect if i watched it now, i would feel uncomfortable because some of those words, in the course of that time, have much more weight and impact and historic meaning, that if i was to redo that now i would approach it with a different attitude. but for me, i felt it was validated

in that i was doing it alongside the actors involved so that we were trying to explore what is the line that causes offence. and i have always have felt that offence is such a catchall word. if someone says they are offended by something, my instinct is to ask what is wrong with being offended? that's not to say that everything is game and you can say whatever you like, and you can use whatever abusive language you care to against anyone, but i do think that if we have a set of beliefs they should be able to withstand at least a joke about those. if they cannot withstand a joke, then maybe those beliefs are not well supported ? and i think it is important that we do not lose that sense of having debate, that we do not shut down because someone has a view that's different from ours. how close are we, do you think, to losing that edge and the debate? well...

clack there goes half my ear. hang on a second. don't worry. you were saying? now that you have two ears again, how close are we to losing that? i think there is a danger. if you look at the politics in america, the extreme...the fact that the democrats and republicans will no longer talk to each other, the last general election in the uk between the extreme position of borisjohnson and the brexiteers and the corbynites and corbynistas who would not brook any dissent. that idea of gathering towards a group who agree entirely with what you say and not in any way considering any kind of contact with anyone else, i think is going to lead to more and more extreme politics and if, as everyone is saying, quite rightly, "can't we just all come together", "this experience of the pandemic has unified us can't we just use this to come together?" the only way you can come together is by talking to each other and talking is not

talking at each other. and not blocking or not platforming someone who disagrees with you. it should involve an attempt to get behind the mindset of someone who completely disagrees with you to see where they are coming from. it strikes me that your recent work including david copperfield and the miniseries you are still filming, a comedy set in outer space, you have moved away a little bit from the very current affairs driven, politically driven satires that we know you for. is it because you have become a little demoralised about the degree to which satire can actually make a difference in today's world? i think you are on a hiding to nothing if you think comedy will change people's views. it maybe illuminate or highlight something but in the end people

decide for themselves. i have been biding my time. it is also a reaction to the fact that things like veep and the thick of it relied on an agreed set of rules and norms that politics was conducted on. and those shows showed politicians compromising, bending, occasionally breaking the rules. but if donald trump can say "i could literally shoot a guy in the face in the middle of fifth avenue and i would still be elected," there are no rules anymore and the rules do not exist. there are no rules so i cannot show how they are being broken. so donald trump has killed...? it is a whole other level of alice in wonderland absurdity. the coronavirus is spiking in america at the moment yet it is being hailed as a terrific success by the administration. facts have become fake and news becomes fake news and therefore

i think, you know, if you wanted to do a literal interpretation of what is happening now, you are better to do it on a daily or weekly basis. but i am standing by. i have not gone away. is at the thought you leave us with? that donald trump is, in a perverse sense, satire—proof? he is an entertainer, he relies on ratings. that is all he is interested in — numbers, whether it is the numbers of people at his inauguration or numbers of those thinking he is doing a good job. he is an entertainer. and everything he says, whether it is misconstrued, as far as he's concerned, he says he was justjoking. he thinks he is telling the joke, so sees himself as a satirist, he is a self—basing satirist, that's what he is. and i think what we have to do is, as i say, confront him with facts. if we can do that in

a funny way, great. but the facts do not exist where he is, so we have to find them. armando iannucci, it's been a pleasure having you on hardtalk. thank you very much indeed. thank you. well, it certainly feels like summer has come to an abrupt end, hasn't it? not just the outbreaks of rain and very fresh air, but also the blustery winds. and more of the same to come on monday and then through the course of the week perhaps more thundery showers on the way. this is what it looks like on the satellite picture. so we've got a big low pressure sitting top of us, there for a little while, and it will stick around through most of monday and the weather front‘s spiralling

into the centre of that low pressure, a lot of isobars there, so a big pressure gradient, that means the wind races into the centre of that low, hence it's so gusty out there. and this is what looks through the early hours of monday. the heaviest of the rain has been around the north—west of england, certainly cumbria, lancashire and parts of the pennines, they got a real dose of rain, currently a flood warning in force around keswick. 0ver monday we will see further heavy spells of rain in the north but then in the afternoon it looks as like that will give way to sunshine and showers. and another blustery day as gusts of wind in some places will reach a0 miles an hour, near gale force for the time of the year. the temperatures are below the average. around 15 degrees there for glasgow and possibly reaching 19 in london. on tuesday, the jet stream is pushing another system in our direction, an area of low pressure not quite as developed as the one we have got over us right now but it will bring cloud and outbreaks of rain in the morning in the south and to the north — i think this is where the focus

will be as far as weather goes — heavy showers, some of them thundery across parts of scotland and maybe the north of england. and temperatures again for many of us around the mid—to—high teens. that was tuesday and this is wednesday. outbreaks of rain in the morning and the south clearing away, giving way to sunshine and then actually showers will start to develop quite widely across the uk during the course of wednesday afternoon. temperatures around 17—20 celsius, the winds a little lighter from tuesday onwards. so here's a summary for the week ahead. a mixed bag across the uk. sometimes brightness and showers and the temperatures may gently creep up towards the end of the week. bye— bye.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm samantha simmonds. the covid—19 global death toll passes half a million. in the us, the governor of texas warns infections have taken a "swift and very dangerous turn". exit polls show polish president andrzej duda finishes first in the election — but doesn't have the votes for an outright victory. disneyland employees protest pandemic workplace safety at the "happiest place on earth". more dangerous than speaking? the uk government to look again at the ban on communal singing.