Hacker Cinema
The Day Today
1994 · TV series · 29 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci
A spoof of the British news — including ridiculous stories, patronising vox pops, offensively hard-hitting research and a sports presenter clearly struggling for metaphors. Adapted from Radio 4 series 'On the Hour'.
5 positivefrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
As in surreal British sketch comedy? You'd like
- The Goon Show (it's this 1950s radio serial that inspired the Pythons... it's surprising how many tropes the Pythons borrowed from it)
- The Goodies
- The Kenny Everett Television Show
- Absolutely!
- The Mighty Boosh / Unnatural Acts / Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy
- Vic Reeves' Big Night Out / The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer / Bang Bang, It's Reeves and Mortimer
- Big Train
- The League of Gentlemen
- On the Hour / The Day Today / Brass Eye
- Jam / Blue Jam
- The Armando Iannucci Shows
- Limmy's Show
Also, to throw in a US programme, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson was pretty good
We should also remember On The Hour, the original radio precursor to The Day Today, though I think the TV series is more important.
My own favourite Chris Morris production is probably his Radio 1 series with the painfully embarrassing improvised tasks he'd set his hapless roving man on the scene.
I think that was also the one that got him temporarily banned from the Beeb for implying - but not outright stating - that Michael Heseltine had died from a heart attack.
Slightly offtopic but anyone with a dark sense of humour would do well to check out Chris Morris's stuff - I get a feeling most younger Brits haven't heard of it. Day Today and Brass Eye, both still funny, are wonderful time capsules satirising Britain as it was thirty years ago.
But IMO his finest work was Blue Jam - the radio comedy not the TV incarnation, hour-long episodes of low-key music and surreal sketches. Absolutely brilliant even today. Archive.org has a copy at https://archive.org/details/chrismorris_bluejam.
Trigger alert: basically everything. The BBC would never get away with broadcasting it now.
I saw 'The Day Today, Episode 1: Main News Attack' in the YoutUbe sidebar of your linked videos, well worth sharing as a staple, neigh bedrock, of 1990s UK satire that Iannucci, mentioned in the original article, was also heavily involved in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGE9153VFE&spfreload=10
FWIW I find IT Crowd funny, but it's not on my 'must have' list. - Office, Green wing, Alan Partridge, blackadder, brasseye, day today, extras, league of gentlemen, psychoville, police squad, 30 rock, etc would all be above it.
IT Crowd is great, but I wish it was a bit more cutting/daring rather than settling into a formulaic sitcom.