Oh, Scotland the Brave. The Scottish Sunday Herald newspaper has chosen to poke fun at the impending presidential inauguration of Donald Trump with a satirical blurb in its television-listing section, where the paper likened the American political festivities to a return of Rod Serling’s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone. In the short write-up, television reviewer Damien Love wrote, among other biting sentiments, that the election of the 45th president of the United States is a “huge interactive virtual reality project†that will set out “to build an ongoing alternative present.†Naturally, the listing has become a bit of a viral sensation this weekend, and you can read it in full below.
President Trump: The Inauguration
4pm, BBC One/STVAfter a long absence, The Twilight Zone returns with one of the ambitious, expensive and controversial productions in broadcast history. Sci-fi writers have dabbled often with alternative history stories — among the most common is the “What if The Nazis Had Won The Second World War†setting — but this huge interactive virtual reality project, which will unfold on TV, in the press, and on Twitter over the next four years, sets out to build an ongoing alternative present.
The story begins in a nightmarish version of 2017 in which huge sections of the US electorate have somehow been duped into voting to make Donald Trump president. It sounds far-fetched, and it is, but as it goes on it becomes more and more chillingly plausible. Today’s feature-length opener concentrates on the gaudy inauguration of President Trump, and the stirrings of protest and despair surrounding the ceremony, while pundits speculate gravely on what lies ahead.
It’s a flawed piece, but a disturbing glimpse of the horrors we could stumble into, if we’re not careful.