Fear of insensitivity after Boston blasts

Channel 4 has dropped Chris Morris’s terrorism satire Four Lions from its schedules following the Boston explosions.

The film, in which radicalised British Muslims detonate explosives during the London Marathon, had been due to air on Film4 on Monday.

But the channel said it dropped the screening ‘in light of recent tragic events’. Three people died and around 140 injured in the explosions at the finishing line of the Boston marathon.

The film, about young losers who aspire to be suicide bombers, will be replaced by the 2008 comedy Role Models.

However, the BFI will still go ahead with two screenings of the film in its London cinema on April 27 and 28.

Meanwhile, an episode of Family Guy has also been pulled from US on-demand service Hulu, because it featured cartoon deaths at the Boston marathon.

The Turban Cowboy showed Peter Griffin driving through the race in his car, mowing down runners as he goes. The plot also has Griffin befriending a terrorist and accidentally setting off an explosion – only heard offscreen – using a mobile phone his new friend gave him.

Some internet users have cut the scenes together to make it appear that the show was depicting a bomb attack at the marathon, an edit which creator Seth MacFarlane has called ‘abhorrent’.

Published: 17 Apr 2013