OK so just for a change its time for a review on a classic TV show, so I've opted for The Day Today, the critically acclaimed pardoy of news and current affairs programmes, starring Chris Morris as Christopher Morris (no time wasted for a made up name) who is the newsreader of the programme. The cast also play multiple roles in the show, as the cast features Steve Coogan, Patrick Marber, Doon Mackichan, David Scheider and Rebecca Front. So while its not really possible to do a plot synopsis of the show I can give it a rough general overview, so let's look at it.
Well the show's format is of course six 30 minute episodes, in which the news is brought to you by Chris Morris and his team. Morris's delivery is akin to that of Jeremy Paxman as he is quite aggressive and confrontational with the people he interviews. One of my many favourite scenes from the show features in the first episode where he interviews a woman who is organising a jam festival, and she so far has only raised £1,500. Morris then responds in disgust "£1,500???! That's a pathetic amount of money! You could raise more money by auctioning dogs! How dare you come on my show, I think you've only done this to make yourself look important. You could make more money begging on the street, looking twice as ugly as you are, which is very ugly indeed!". Morris also even goes as far as to start a war between Hong Kong and Australia as two of their countries representatives are on his show and he disagrees with them both, and urges their nations to go to war. Morris also bullies and coerces his news team as well, such as the inept Peter O'Hanraha-harahan (Patrick Marber) and one of their funniests scene come when Peter let's a man he is interviewing escape, just when he has uncovered a scandal, and Morris yells "Peter, you've lost the news!".
Morris also starts the show with the headlines and follows them up with them with phrases such as "these are the headlines, happy now?" and "now fact me till I fart!" and "these are the headlines, dear God I wish they weren't!" and "this is the news!" and my personal fav "Hello, sir!". And also worthy of note regarding Morris in the show, is the final scene of each episode when the credits roll and the lights dim on the studio floor, each week we see Morris do something bizarre such as lie on the foor in a crucifix type position, take off a wig to reveal he has long blonde hair, and also injecting heroin into his arm!
The show's other characters are also very funny and most notably it features Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) as a sports news reader, who Morris starts off bullying and by the end of the last episode he gives him a kiss! Partridge is pretty inept in his job, and his commentary on sports is priceless, especially in the first episode when he commentates on football "That was a goal! Shit! The man must have a foot like a traction engine!". Also when he is at horse races you see Alan comment on some of the things going around outside, such as watching kids playing about "ahh some kids playing around, let's hope that tomfoolery doesn't turn into bling ugly violence!". The scene where he goes into the shower room and he interviews a femal horsejumper who get's undressed, and he grows increasingly comfortable as she does, he finishes the interview by looking at the camera awkwardly and says "Patricia Barfits, a lady".
The other characters also feature Collaterlie Sisters, played Doon MacKichan, whom Morris appears to have an open hatred for, as after he introduces her on one occassion you hear him say "take her off my screen I don't want to see her face!". Collaterlie presents the business news, and talks in jargon, when talking about the currency markets and the stock exchange, and show uses terms such as "the financial arse" and "the currency cat" and "currency kidney". Peter O'Hanraha-harahan is funny as he is a very inept economics correspondent, and in one scene he claims to have had a conversation with a German minister over a economic deal, in German, and he keeps saying how the minister claims "he's not too happy, but he had to go along with it". Morris quickly exposes that Peter has no knowledge of the language and proceeds to humiliate him and says "Peter you are lying in a news grave. What does it say on your tombstone?" and Peter feebly replies "News!".
Then there is Barbara Wintergreen (Rebecca Front) as the American news correspondent, who reports on a couple of stories such as a mass murderer, Chapman Baxter (played by Marber) who wishes to die like Elvis, going on an electrocuted toilet, eating hamburgers and after reaching a certain weight, he will be fried. Barbara after signing off always give sultry looks at the camera, and uses puns throughout her broadcasts. Sylvester Stuart (Schneider) is the weatherman, who we only see his head as a graphic, which moves over the weatherboard, and he uses strange metaphors when delivering his report such as describing gloomy weather as "a bit like waking up next to a corpse". And one of my favourite characters is Ted Maul (played by Morris) who is a middle aged reporter who covers the more hard hitting stories, and he speaks in an exaggerated manner, and his funniest scene is where he reports on horses that stampede the London underground, and how "in 1970 in came the crackers, a team of men sent down into the tunnels who killed the horses with hammers!". And finally another amusing character who appears briefly in the show is Jacques Liverot, a pretentious French philosopher, who makes silly statements such as "an old man stands naked in front of a mirror eating soup. He is a fool" and "What is a gay?" and my favourite is "a man driving sees God in his car, he crashes".
Of some of the many hilarious new items on the show, here are some of my favourites, starting with the terrorist dogs in London, who are packed with explosives, and cause chaos on the streets. In the report Eugene Fraxby (great name, also played by Morris) states how a policeman killed a dog in the ensuing chaos and some pedestrians who got in the way, "three people and one dog dead from guns, being old they would have died soon anyway, but the dog was cut to ribbons in its prime". Another one is the psuedo documentary show "Its your blood" where Morris gives supposed real life accounts of near disasters that were narrowly avoided, and the story features Morris (with a great hairdo!) reporting with a helcopter in the background. Morris says "helicopters with great blades that cut the air, air that's easy to slice, like human beings!". Another news item is one that takes place at a local swimming pool, where the middle aged security guards talks about the safety of the pool over the years, "in 1976 no one died, 1977 no one died, 1978 no one edied, 1979 no one died, in 1980 someone died, in 1981 no one died... I mean could go on!".
There is also an MTV parody station called RokTV, with Morris dressed up as a female presenter called Susie Bapswent (and he passes more than a resemblance to Sandra Bernhard in that one!) and talks about the latest that's going in the music world. The funniest story on RokTV is on the American rapper, Fur-Q, who executes people live during his stage shows, but he insists "you can't kill everybody, because then there would be no one left to respect". Yet another funny item is "Attitudes" which is a BBC2 documentary which examines the changing attitudes of British television over the years, starting from the 50s onward, in which we see the last televised British hanging. Also we see during the 60s, a British television presenter who is being given oral sex by a "groupie" and afterwards he says "he had an intense feeling of joy, which has now been replaced with a sense of disappointment and dispair". Also in this item it talks about bad language on TV and one of the first shows to use it which is a soap opera, a la Coronation Street, with a man and one exchanging words "tarra you great big hairy cock!" and the man says "tarra ya shitter!".
The Day Today also features a funny weekly segment called "Speak your brains" where Morris goes onto the streets and interviews people, and one person he interviews is a man, who he asks about soul reversal and has he experienced it and the men says yes, and Morris asks how does it feel, to which the man replies "not very nice!". Morris also interviews another man on the street where he tries to get him to unwittingily plug the Day Today, and eventually get's him to say "I can't think of any day that wouldn't involve the day today!". In another vox pop street interview Morris get's a member of the public to read from a piece of paper which reads "do this our I will run it up your fugde tunnels!" and another one where he asks the man to repeat the words "mudda fakkas" and just once more for the camera "mudda fakkas!". The voice overs in the show are also quite funny and nonsensical, and feature daft slogans such as "news felch!" or "news from telly to belly" or "swinging the wasps off the apple of truth" and "news, because fact into doubt won't go!".
Perhaps for me the less successful part of the show is the inclusion of its in-show soap opera "The Bureau" which takes place at a currency exchange office, where the workers all argue with one another and their boss (Coogan) bullies one of them, played by Marber, because he's gay, and its suggested he's having a romance with another (played by Front). It feels to me like it was tacked onto the show and it does kind of take away from the otherwise great flow it has.
But apart from that the Day Today was a great satire and a terrific television series, which brought Chris Morris into the limelight, as well as his co-stars such as Steve Coogan, as well establishing its producer and co-wrtier Armando Iannucci as one of the great comedy minds in the UK. Its format would later on be similarly revised into a pseudo docuemntary series by Morris in Brass Eye, which was far more controversial, but it all started here with The Day Today, which remains one of the freshest and funniest television satires of its time.
And on that note I will see goodbye for now!
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