BAGHDAD Nearly every night here for the past month, Iraqis weary of the strife around them have been turning on the television to watch a wacky- looking man with a giant Afro wig and star-shaped glasses deliver the grim news of the day.
In a recent episode, the host, Saaed Khalifa, reported that the Ministry of Water and Sewage had decided to change its name to simply the Ministry of Sewage - because it had given up on the water part.
In another episode, he jubilantly declared that "Rums bin Feld" had announced American troops were leaving the country on 1/1, in other words, Jan. 1. His face crumpled when he realized he had made a mistake. The troops were not actually departing on any specific date, he clarified, but instead leaving one by one. At that rate, it would take more than 600 years for them to be gone.
The newscast is a parody, of course, that fires barbs at everyone from the U.S. military to the Iraqi government, an Iraqi version of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." Even the militias wreaking havoc on the country are lampooned.
Debuting last month during Ramadan, while families gathered to break their fast after sundown, the show, "Hurry Up, He's Dead," became the talk of Baghdad, delighting and shocking audiences with its needling of anyone with a hand in Iraqis' gloomy predicament.
The acerbic newscasts, each lasting about 20 minutes, are broadcast on Al Sharqiya, an Iraqi satellite station that has at times run afoul of the government for its regular news coverage. They are continuing through Id al-Fitr, the Muslim celebration signaling the end of Ramadan this week. Officials at the station are in discussions about turning the show into a weekly program.
The show's success is a testament to the gallows humor with which many Iraqis now view their lives - still lacking basic services and plagued by unrelenting violence more than three years after the American-led invasion.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, comedies have proliferated on Iraqi television. Al Sharqiya has another popular show, "Caricatures, " also known for its dark humor toward the country's problems.
Given the response by Iraqis, the channel's fake newscast seems to have eclipsed others in its genre in popularity.
"We need fun in our lives because of our tragic circumstances, " said Silvana, 21, a Baghdad resident who has been tuning in every night with her family, when the electricity has been working.
"Most of the channels focus on the violence, the bodies," she said. "But this program depicts our tragedies in a funny light."
Khalifa, the show's star, is a short, heavyset comedian who was a well- known theater actor in Iraq during the time that Saddam Hussein's government was in power.
The initial episodes were taped in Dubai because the producers decided it would be too dangerous and logistically difficult to film in Baghdad. Despite its madcap humor, he said, the show has a serious message.
"The purpose of the show is to fix Iraq," he said. "We want to fix the civil services. We want to fix the government officials. We want to fix the relationships between people. We want to fix the government and stop the corruption."
The newscast opens with an explanation of the show's underlying premise: it is the year 2017 and the main character, Saaed, is the last Iraqi alive. He is shown lying face down on the beach with a red suitcase next to him. When he comes to, he is quickly encircled by beautiful women. Cut to a scene of Khalifa clad in a black T-shirt imprinted with "2PAC," showboating in front of a white stretch Humvee limousine with dancers cavorting all around.
The show's raucous theme song, which has become a popular cellphone ring tone here and can be heard being sung by children in schoolyards, laments that it would be better to be a lowly cat on the street than an Iraqi: "No one asks the cat where you are from, which party you're from, whether you are an Arab, a Kurd, a Sunni or a Shiite."
He sings on, "I am the last Iraqi alive, but I still do not own a house," a reference to the country's acute housing shortage.
The show's title appears initially as "The Government," but the Arabic words split in half to reveal the actual name, another crack at the country's plight.
When the broadcast begins, it takes place in the present. The show is meant to be a narration of how Khalifa's country fell apart and he ended up as the last survivor, said Talib al-Sudani, the show's writer, who sold the rights to the show to Al Sharqiya several months ago for just $3,700.
Sudani said he had lost hope for his country. Iraqi leaders are incompetent, he said. He fears that services will never be restored. The American experiment in democracy, he said, was born dead.
All anyone can do, he said, is laugh.
Khalid al-Ansary, Ali Adeeb and Qais Mizher contributed reporting