The Day Today is a British comedy television show that parodies television news and current affairs programmes, broadcast from 19 January to 23 February 1994 on BBC2. It was created by Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris and is an adaptation of the radio programme On the Hour, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 9 August 1991 and 28 May 1992 and was also written by Morris, Iannucci, Steven Wells, Andrew Glover, Stewart Lee, Richard Herring, David Quantick, and the cast. For The Day Today, Peter Baynham joined the writing team, and Lee and Herring were replaced by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews. The principal cast of On the Hour was retained for The Day Today.
The Day Today is composed of six half-hour episodes and a selection of shorter five-minute slots recorded as promotional trailers for the longer episodes. The series won many awards including Morris winning the 1994 British Comedy Award for Best Newcomer. All six episodes are available on BBC DVD, having previously been issued on VHS.
Contents
Format
Each episode is presented as a mock news programme, and the episodes rely on a combination of ludicrous fictitious news stories, covered with a serious, quasi-professional attitude. Each episode revolves around one or two major stories which are pursued throughout the programme, along with a host of other stories usually only briefly referred to. The programme dips into other channels from time to time, presents clips of fictitious upcoming BBC programmes, and conducts street interviews with passers-by in a segment titled Speak Your Brains.
It frequently comments on other programmes, most often a spoof soap opera called The Bureau, set in a 24-hour bureau de change, incorporating clichéd plots, which apparently produces and airs 2,000 episodes between the first and third episodes of The Day Today and becomes a hit in Italy. The programme also contains clips from a spoof documentary series called The Pool, featuring a public swimming pool and its neurotic staff, Morris' character explaining that The Day Today has funded a documentary on every public building in the country. The final episode features reports from the fictitious documentary The Office, which follows office workers as they go on a retreat with an efficiency expert. Other non-news segments of the programme include the occasional "physical cartoons" of current events set in the studio. Morris frequently parodies entirely separate channels, including RokTV (spoofing MTV); reporting on the fictitious and psychotically violent African-American rapper Fur-Q; and Genutainment, a segment which reports on a sheepdog averting a helicopter disaster in a parody of the real-life rescue show 999.
The programme occasionally features producer Armando Iannucci and writer Peter Baynham, the latter playing Gay Desk reporter Colin Poppshed, among other characters. John Thomson, Graham Linehan, Tony Haase and Minnie Driver also appear. Michael Alexander St John provides the voiceover stings, as he did in On the Hour.
Much of the programme's humour derives from its bombastic style of reporting and its unnecessarily elaborate graphics. The theme tune is deliberately overdramatic and self-important, and the opening sequence of each episode is lengthy and complex, a parody of the overuse of computer-generated credit sequences on news programmes (as the graphics throughout were developed and designed by ITN). One episode presents false adverts featuring depictions of The Day Today being broadcast in bizarre locations: the night sky over Paris, the sides of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, the "International Hackenbacker Building" in Chicago, and the handles of 400 million petrol pumps across the globe; this is a parody of CNN International's promotions advertising the hotels in which the channel could be seen.
The programme frequently lambasts Conservative government politicians in office at the time of the programme's production. Those repeatedly lampooned by the series include John Major, Michael Heseltine (who had his picture swapped with an old Bosnian woman), Chris Patten, Douglas Hurd, Virginia Bottomley, and Michael Portillo, in addition to US President Bill Clinton. Labour politician Paul Boateng also appears briefly in an interview about the fictitious musician 'Herman the Tosser'.
Each episode is brought to an interrupted ending with just enough time to quickly overview the following day's newspapers (a parody of Jeremy Paxman on BBC2's Newsnight) printed with absurd headlines such as "Lord Mayor's pirouette in fire chief wife decapitation" (which is referred to as 'grizzly but gripping'), "'crazed wolves in store a mistake', admits Mothercare" or "Russia elects cobweb" and a final humorously misused video. Each episode ends in a familiar style for news reports, with the camera panning out as the studio lights dim on Morris. Instead of shuffling his papers in clichéd newsreader style, Morris takes advantage of the dimming lights to perform bizarre activities; putting many pens in his jacket pockets, placing a tourniquet around his arm in preparation to inject heroin, removing his normal hair to reveal long blonde locks underneath, and, in the last episode, prostrating himself before the newsdesk.
In addition to the character Alan Partridge and many of the cast and writers, there are other crossovers between the fictional worlds of On the Hour, The Day Today and the radio and television series of Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge. With the exception of Patrick Marber, the entire main cast of The Day Today take guest roles in I'm Alan Partridge, in addition to writers Peter Baynham, Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan. Marber is, however seen in a photograph on the wall of Peartree Productions.
Notable coverage
The programme features surreal news items. Examples include:
Reports that explosive-packed terrorist dogs were being released in London by the IRA. These "bomb dogs" wreak havoc, and prompt the British police to begin executing any dog on sight. This story is accompanied by a clip of Steve Coogan impersonating a Gerry Adams-esque Sinn Féin leader, spouting rhetoric while inhaling helium to subtract credibility from his statement. This was a satirical comment on broadcasters' responses to the law at the time, which prevented any Sinn Féin spokesperson from being heard in radio and television; their words would instead be dubbed by an actor speaking in a neutral tone of voice.
Coverage of a feud between John Major and the Queen. The feud culminates in physical fighting between the two in Buckingham Palace, videoed by a secret reporter who comments on "loud swearing voices", "the sounds of bodies falling against furniture", and the "Prime Minister leaving with bleeding legs". Early coverage of the incident worsens the situation, and prompts Morris' character to air a propaganda reel reserved for national emergencies; film consisting of a sequence of subtly humorous scenarios (stockbrokers spend "playtime" outside the London Stock Exchange jumping and skipping; a paramedic comforting an injured old woman gives her a brief kiss on the cheek; a man with a cigarette gets the offer of a light from a group of six-year-olds), all set against a backdrop of patriotic British music ("Thaxted" by Gustav Holst), in an effort to boost British national solidarity. The feud ultimately ends with the Queen and her entourage marching on Downing Street to beat up John Major, and after the close of the incident, the Royal Mail issues a commemorative stamp featuring the Queen and John Major kissing.
Coverage of an ongoing rail crisis, following a train trapped on the tracks in Hampshire. Trapped by a jammed semaphore signal, the stranded train rapidly becomes the scene of anarchy and paganism, its passengers reverting to an animalistic state.
In the fifth episode, Morris provokes a war between Australia and Hong Kong as much of the episode revolves around bombastically over-the-top reports on the resulting conflict in a parody of the extensive and overdramatic media coverage of the Gulf War. Subsequent reports of the war delivered from "Eastmanstown in the Upper Cataracts, on the Australio-Hong-Kong border", are humorously blown out of proportion. At the end of the episode, a false advertisement features a three-tape VHS set of the war produced by The Day Today, featuring footage of the war and its origins, set against a backdrop of inappropriate pop music, a parody of tabloid television's tendency to "dumb down" stories and present serious events in a lighthearted manner.
Main characters
Christopher Morris (Chris Morris) – the newsreader. Morris has several computers giving him the news instantly from around the world, and often interrupts segments in order to break in with more important stories. He is confrontational and aggressive, often arguing with reporters and insulting guests on-air, and at one stage provoking a war between Australia and Hong Kong. The character was described by the British Film Institute as "a gleeful, bloodlust hybrid of Jeremy Paxman and Michael Buerk". In The Day Today, Morris reprises his overzealous newsreader role from On the Hour.
Collaterlie Sisters (alternative spelling: "Collately Sisters") (Doon Mackichan) – business correspondent. As satire of the incomprehensible nature of business news to the layperson, Sisters talks nonsensically about the world of business, padding out her reports with meaningless jargon ("Trading remained succulent for the rest of the day.") She uses bewildering graphics, mainly when addressing the currency market, using such aids as the "Currency Cat", the "Currency Kidney", and the "International Finance Arse". Sisters also employs odd syntaxes, reciting strangely arranged sentences in a semi-robotic deadpan fashion (often smirking at arbitrary points in the monologue) and frequently name-checking Chris in the middle of her reports. During her reports, a news ticker scrolls across the bottom, displaying meaningless symbols. Morris can sometimes be heard making scathing remarks about her. In one episode, he asks for Sisters to be taken off his monitor as "I don't want to see her face".
Sylvester Stuart (David Schneider) – the weatherman. Only Stuart's head is seen, usually floating on a graphic background. He describes the weather with elliptical analogies such as "That's about as warm as going into a heated drawing room after chopping some wood" and describing gloomy weather as "a bit like waking up next to a corpse." His reports have included the "Metball", a pinball-style graphic of the British Isles with Stuart's face as the ball, and another featuring the "Weather Collar", a large collar with the British Isles painted on it, rotating his head to face different areas of the country.
Barbara Wintergreen (Rebecca Front) – correspondent on The Day Today's American sister channel CBN. Speaking with an exaggerated American accent, Wintergreen reports on the multiple executions of mass murderer Chapman Baxter (Patrick Marber) by a variety of bizarre methods, and on US couples having a prosthetic pregnancy. All her reports make use of convoluted puns and interviews with stereotypical stock characters in American culture (including Steve Coogan as dimwitted Southerner Alvin Holler). Wintergreen's reports end with a joke and pouting at the camera. The CBN reports are presented in a different format to other reports shown in the episodes; her segments are made using different shooting and editing techniques which mimic the appearance of American news, while the content of her reports satirises common British perceptions of the American media. The segments went through excessive processing to accentuate the reduction in picture quality typical of standards conversion of the time. The character of Barbara Wintergreen originated in On the Hour, which also featured a character identical to Chapman Baxter, played by Marber and named "Daimler Jeffries".
Cast and crew
Cast
Chris Morris as Christopher Morris, Ted Maul, other roles
Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge, Alvin Holler, Mr. Hennity of The Bureau, Spartacus Mills, other roles
Rebecca Front as Barbara Wintergreen, Rosy May, Valerie Sinatra, Ange of The Bureau, other roles
Doon Mackichan as Collaterlie Sisters, Maria of The Bureau, other roles
Patrick Marber as Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan, Jaques-'Jaques' Liverot, Chapman Baxter, Guy of The Bureau, other roles
David Schneider as Sylvester Stewart, Brant, Alex of The Bureau, other roles
Michael Alexander St John – voiceover
The Day Today also features appearances by show co-creator Armando Iannucci, also by Peter Baynham, Jean Ainslie, John Thomson, Graham Linehan, Alan Stocks and Minnie Driver.
Crew
Reception
The Day Today was described as "achingly funny" by the Daily Mirror and "the freshest and funniest comedy since Monty Python" by The Independent. NME's review was mixed, calling it "not exactly hilarious".
DVD bonus material
The DVD features extensive bonus material, including short episodes featuring original material that were broadcast the night before each episode's original transmission, the original pilot episode, and an Open University programme about news presentation which includes an analysis of how and why parodies such as The Day Today work.
The DVD also includes several "easter eggs" including: a version of a State of the Union Address by George W. Bush, edited to make United States policy seem insanely belligerent; a new audio discussion between Morris and Alan Partridge discussing bizarre theories of how Diana, Princess of Wales, and John F. Kennedy died; a further discussion between Morris and Partridge about the environment; a reunion of Morris, Partridge, Brant, Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan, Collaterlie Sisters and Valerie Sinatra; and another audio sketch featuring Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan pretending to file a report from the World Trade Center covering up the fact that he had overslept, while blithely unaware about the attacks on 11 September 2001 have just taken place. Pressing the Angle button during the third episode unveils brief, intermittent visual descriptions of the episode by Andy Hodgson and Jennifer Reinfrank, whilst a half-hour interview with Steve Coogan, conducted by Mark Radcliffe on 17 January 1994 edition of his radio show, can be accessed through the extended scenes menu.