Frances Grant: 'Bloody Mary' merely mediocre

Prime Minister Helen Clark might favour the notion of respectful satire - what politician wouldn't? - but like the "virgin birth", it's a concept that's inherently contradictory.

Satire is the most savage form of wit, its aim to deflate the powerful, self-important or the dangerously absurd. If it's not making someone angry, it's probably not working.

Anyone offended by the scatological send-up of the more credulous excesses of the Catholic faithful in South Park's "Bloody Mary" episode on C4 last night should sample a bit of Swift or Pope, or the outrageous carnality of the Catholic clergy in the medieval Italian best-seller The Decameron.

At its best, South Park delivered the deserving a fresh, energetic skewering.

Now, well past its use-by date, the strain is showing. What better way to get some attention than spatter gross-out humour on a church which conveniently retired death sentences for heretics some time ago but seems to have discovered that aggrieved victimhood can go a long way in the media spotlight, too.

Of course, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone could have made their point without resorting to the vulgarity of portraying a statue of the Virgin Mary showering menstrual blood, accompanied by ghastly farting noises.

Here was an opportunity to mock some of the Catholic Church's weakest links - the ardent desire among the more superstitious in its flock for miracles, its insistence the mother of God was above human female sexual reproduction - targets so soft they surely require not much more than a sceptical nod or wink.

But as the makers of a show which has thrived on puerile adolescent male humour as an essential part of its package, you have to ask, why would they?

The Catholic Church in New Zealand has surely helped the pair on their mission - to keep the loot from their creation flowing in by never growing up and doing so disgracefully.

Surely those who should be offended most are the loyal South Park fans who were delivered at best only a mediocre episode.

Next in line should come Alcoholics Anonymous, which, far worse than an attack on supporting cast members, suffered a full-blown mocking of its very tenets.

Meanwhile, if the Catholic Church really wants to get serious about its portrayal in popular culture, perhaps, rather than worrying about a TV show with a fading cult following on a channel which never troubles the top programme charts, it might ponder why international best-seller The Da Vinci Code's rabid theory of the church's suppression of the feminine has struck such a powerful chord.

* Frances Grant is a Herald TV reviewer