Look twice - it's Double Take

Look twice - it's Double Take

A skateboarding Mr Blair - or is it?

Was that really Camilla Parker Bowles getting tipsy on champagne - and Sven-Goran Eriksson dancing secretly to Abba in a lift?

And how did the BBC get those candid paparazzi-style shots of Tony Blair singing Teletubbies to his infant son Leo?

Sadly for the tabloids, this was not the stuff of their wildest dreams but a new BBC Two satirical comedy series called Double Take.

It features a cast of celebrity lookalike actors resembling members of the royal family, politicians and leading media personalities in supposedly "off-camera" situations.

It works so well partly because the realistic footage is filmed as if shot on a shaky hand-held camcorder.

It is done in an often grainy black-and-white "long-lens" style, creating the impression that viewers are getting a voyeuristic private peek into the lives of the famous.

In fact, each of the scenes is staged using clever filming, sharp dialogue and skilled acting to produce a visually arresting and often very funny result.

The show's pilot episode won a Bafta for most innovative programme for its creator, British artist Alison Jackson.

Double Take examines the public's fixation with celebrity

About 2.3m people tuned in to watch the first full episode of the much-publicised series on Monday night.

Targets included the Queen, Prince Charles, Camilla Parker Bowles and Princes William and Harry.

Mrs Parker Bowles' image could be seen swigging champagne from a bottle at what appeared to be a rowdy party alongside Prince Harry.

The Queen was seen having problems making her corgis sit in the palace gardens, while William learned the art of the royal wave from his grandmother in front of a mirror.

David Beckham's infamous alleged dressing room bust-up with Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was recreated - complete with some scarily plausible screaming from Sir Alex.

Unflattering

Tony and Cherie Blair, President Bush and Chancellor Gordon Brown were among the politicians depicted in intimate or compromising situations.

Others pilloried included Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie, Chris Evans and his wife Billie Piper, and singer Michael Jackson.

The show pulls no punches and is likely to niggle some of its victims with the often unflattering light it shows them in.

Jackson, for example, was portrayed on Monday night's episode apparently pulling off a part of his nose in a blackly comic reference to the surgery he is alleged to have undergone.

Mr Blair was seen letting President Bush beat him at tennis - while not giving an inch to Gordon Brown on the same court.

'Fixation with celebrity'

With Double Take, creator Alison Jackson has brought an original idea about contemporary society to the TV screen.

"My work is about our fixation with celebrity and celebrity culture, and how we tend to believe in things through a set of images, rather than knowing the real situation," she said in a recent interview.

"Whether the content is about Saddam and Bin Laden, or the Queen and Camilla, I'm interested in the fantasies we build up in our minds, and think are true."

Jackson, 38, first attracted controversy about a year after Princess Diana's death with realistic looking pictures of Diana, her boyfriend Dodi al-Fayed, and a toddler deemed to be their offspring.

Her work received wider public recognition through a Schweppes advertising campaign featuring Sven-Goran Eriksson in Union Jack underpants, and Jeffrey Archer receiving a prison visit from Lady Thatcher.

Despite the biting nature of the TV show, Jackson - a former Royal College of Art student - insists she is not a satirist.

"It's not topical for a start - it took eight months to put together," she says.

"My work isn't about celebrities, but the way we mistake the image for the person."

Double Take is on BBC Two on Monday nights at 2130 GMT.