PULLING STRINGS ON RICH AND FAMOUS

Imagine a TV show featuring America’s movers and shakers--the biggest names in government, politics, sports and entertainment. Then imagine that same show ridiculing its hotshot guests.

It would never happen--unless the “guests” were actually puppets: life-sized, ingeniously constructed, knockdown funny caricatures of the famous and fumbling. That’s exactly what you get in the side-splitting “Spitting Image: Down and Out in the White House,” a British-bred two-parter airing at 9:30 p.m. Saturday and Sept. 6 on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39).

“I don’t think we’re any meaner than Garry Trudeau,” said Londoner Jon Blair, the special’s co-executive producer with on-camera host David Frost.

And Attila the Hun wasn’t meaner than Jack the Ripper.

“Down and Out in the White House” is an Americanized spinoff of Blair’s hit “Spitting Image” series that’s been airing weekly and making waves in Britain off and on since 1984. The nonpartisan satire is exquisitely merciless (“Nothing and no one is sacred,” says Blair), far more skilled and deadly than just about anything of its kind that’s been produced for American TV.

Come to think of it, there’s never been anything of its kind that’s been produced for American TV.

“The great charm of our show is that you can have anyone on that you want and not have to deal with his agent,” Blair said from London.

The hilarious puppet characters on “Down and Out in the White House” range from a fawning Vice President George Bush to a hulking Sylvester Stallone, who goes around saying: “Uhhh.” There’s a rambling Ronnie, of course, as well as big bites out of Democrats, and a grinning Jack Nicholson that absolutely puts you away.

There are also Henry Kissinger, Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, Hugh Hefner, Johnny Carson, Richard Nixon, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Cosby, Jackie Onassis, Ed McMahon and on and on.

The puppets are wonderful takeoffs and most of the voices are right on. They--and the material--are critical.

“If any one thing fails, everything can fall apart,” Blair said. “A brilliant performer can get an indifferent piece of material and can lift it into something special. All we have here are puppets. They are not George Burns. And if the voice is no good, you’re exposed. If the character is not quite right, you’re exposed.”

It all comes together on “Down and Out in the White House.” The story: A sinister organization called the Famous Corporation, headed by McMahon, plots to pick the next President. It puts in Ramboesque Stallone as the Republican nominee and gets the self-destructive Democrats to pick someone they think will surely lose, a window washer who turns out to be Uncle Sam. Later, McMahon and his fellow plotters plan to have Nixon kidnap Reagan and replace him with Hoffman in a Reagan mask. If only Dustin can, you know, get into his character.

Here’s to NBC for airing these spitting images and, according to Blair, for wanting a series option should the two programs turn on enough viewers.

“We refused,” he said. “We remain to be convinced that we could deliver the same quality on that kind of treadmill. We prefer to turn Americans on with a special every six months.”

That’s a refreshing attitude, and one that in part reflects the slower treadmill of British TV. Whereas we grind out series like sausages, British TV is saner, generally shooting them in much smaller batches, giving everyone room to breathe.

This season, for example, the Sunday “Spitting Image” series in Britain will make only 18 episodes, shooting them in three groups of six. The British series (two episodes of which were shown on the Cinemax cable channel last year) is far more topical and news oriented than “Spitting Images” on NBC.

“We have more than 350 characters,” Blair said, “and if Gorbachev died on a Saturday night, we could have his successor on Sunday’s show.”

The show’s Ronald Reagan character gets the biggest response, although the Royal Family and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher are also frequent targets. “She hates the show,” Blair said.

Blair, also a part-time resident of Upstate New York, thinks it was “terribly brave” of NBC to commission the “Spitting Image” programs. “I won’t begin to predict the ratings,” he said. Or the response from some of the spoofees.

Once again for reminders, here’s that excerpt of Sly: “Uhhh.”