Da Ali G Show
Sacha Baron Cohen's ambush-interview show, and the launchpad for three of comedy's most infamous characters. Beginning on Britain's Channel 4 in 2000 and crossing to HBO in 2003, it sent Cohen — in character as faux-streetwise poseur Ali G, Kazakh reporter Borat, or Austrian fashionista Brüno — into real interviews with unsuspecting politicians, celebrities, and experts who had no idea they were being had. The results were excruciating, brilliant, and eventually spun off into a string of hit films.
Da Ali G Show premiered in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 on 30 March 2000, built around a character Sacha Baron Cohen had already developed on British television: Ali G, a clueless poseur affecting streetwise slang. The format put Cohen, fully in character, across the table from real public figures — government officials, academics, business leaders — who believed they were doing a legitimate interview. Their earnest attempts to answer his absurd questions, never breaking the fiction, were the whole joke.
The show expanded its roster of alter egos to three: Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev (a bumbling reporter from Kazakhstan), and Brüno Gehard (a flamboyant Austrian fashion journalist). Each character was a different vehicle for exposing the vanity, prejudice, or credulity of the people who agreed to sit down with them. An American version premiered on HBO on 21 February 2003, and across its life the show ran three series of six episodes each, 18 in total.
Da Ali G Show's real legacy was the film franchise it seeded. Borat, the breakout, headlined the 2006 feature Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, a global sensation that spawned further Borat and Brüno movies. The show also proved remarkably resilient: FXX later re-aired it, rebranded as Ali G: Rezurection, in 2014, including episodes American audiences had never seen.
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