Without doubt the most important satirical show of the 1990s.
The
Day Today was the programme that - under writer/producer Armando
Iannucci - launched the talents of Patrick Marber, Doon Mackichan,
Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front and, of course, Chris Morris firmly into the
public eye.
It
was a sign of the times that, where series such as That Was The Week
That Was and Not the Nine O'Clock News dealt with current affairs, The
Day Today focused with laser-like intensity upon the current affairs
media.
Each episode was presented as a very real
news programme, right down to the ludicrously overblown graphics that
appeared between each item (whose creators had, incidentally, just
finished designing the graphics for the ITN News) and was presided over
by Chris Morris in the sneeringly macho style of a youthful Jeremy
Paxman.
While Morris bellowed out news headlines about
thefts of the pound and its replacement by an emergency currency based
on the Queen's eggs, the rest of the show was delivered by a cast of
news-programme stereotypes still instantly recognisable today.
Collaterlie
Sisters (Mackichan) was the epitome of the shoulder-padded business
correspondent, bombarding viewers with unintelligible graphics and
technobabble about the pound's decline on the Currency Kidney.
American
Correspondent Barbara Wintergreen (Front) was the true
stars-and-stripes-too-much-make-up-and-dodgy-puns reporter instantly
recognisable from genuine US news coverage.
Economics
correspondent Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan (Marber), meanwhile was
uselessness personified, constantly blown away by the verbal grenades
chucked at him by Morris from a great height.
Add
to this bearded eco-correspondent Rosie May (Front), the physical
cartoons of rubber-faced Brant (Schneider), postmodernist French
commentator Jacques "Jacques" Liverot (Marber) and, of course, the
immortal sports-correspondent Alan Partridge (Coogan) plus stories about
John Major's feud with the Queen, trapped passengers on a crashed train
turning to paganism and a war between Hong Kong and Australia provoked
by Morris and you have the makings of a comic legend.
The
Day Today was undoubtedly brilliant but it was more than capable of
being a little self-satisfied at times, exemplified by the plentiful
in-jokes for the mediarati (such as Morris's "fact me until I fart" line
in one episode) which must have mystified outsiders.
Again,
where Chris Morris's later stitch-ups of politicians, pop stars and
pundits on Brass Eye were fair game, watching him getting ordinary
members of the public to say dumb-assed things in the show's regular
"Speak Your Brains" Vox Pops can feel a lot like watching a smart public
school sixth-former mocking the oiks.
Being
a satirical sketch show rather than a sitcom, the programme also lacked
the emotional intelligence of successor programmes such as Knowing Me,
Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge.
Despite such
criticism, The Day Today brought some major figures of stage and screen
to the nation's attention as well as defining the approach to satire for
the next two decades - a record only comic icons like That Was The Week
That Was and Not the Nine O'Clock News can match.
Not bad for a mere six episodes, eh?
