A musical with sweary puppets might be one of the biggest movie miracles of all time.

Team America: World Police started out as an homage to Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds mixed with Jerry Bruckheimer all-action, post 9/11 US foreign policy and a hint of disaster movies. It's likely that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone simply had no idea what they were in for when they agreed to make this movie and release it in October 2004.

They had five months(!)

Five months to make a fully practical movie starring marionettes, with scale sets and explosions and montages and sex! With zero CGI.

Did they do it? Bleep yeah. This episode explains how, and why we should be retrospectively praising this movie for more than its satire.

This episode was originally released on 16th June 2022

Mentioned in this episode:

From the Archive

There's no new episode this week, so I thought you might be interested in revisiting this slightly older, but no less brilliant episode. Just bear in mind, this episode is several years old, it may not sound quite as polished as newer episodes, and new information may have come to light in recent years with regards to the making of this movie (please see above for the original date of release)