Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #896 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-04-26
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 180 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Fact me till I fart, it's The Day Today, the most outrageously satirical show ever to feature a man called Chris Morris--until Brass Eye, that is. Both savage and surreal, The Day Today heaps great steaming mounds of abuse and scorn upon our self-appointed moral guardians, upon pompous pundits, puerile newspaper headline-writers and vacuous, self-important TV presenters. And they all richly deserve it.

First broadcast in 1994, the show's format is Newsnight-meets-Crimewatch in Hell. A ridiculously protracted title sequence and melodramatic headline announcements introduce Morris' demented, Jeremy Paxman-a-like anchorman, who simpers to the viewers while castigating on-air his useless reporter Peter O'Hanraha'hanrahan. The vacant Collatallie Sisters turns financial news into a Dadaist nightmare of meaningless statistics, graphically illustrated by the currency cat or the finance arse; while American journo Barbara Wintergreen's reports from Death Row are just scary and absurd enough to be completely believable. Also making his TV debut here is Steve Coogan's legendary sports caster Alan Partridge, with his appalling sports reporting, his cringe-inducing misunderstandings and his sheer blunt-headed stupidity (many of the same team, sans Morris, would reunite the following year for Knowing Me, Knowing You). Sketches such as the spoof soap "The Bureau" and the spoof docu-soap "The Pool" also betray the writing skills of Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews, creators of Father Ted.

On the DVD: The Day Today arrives as a two-disc set with all six episodes on the first disc. The second disc has a handful of fairly brief but still enjoyable extras: here you will find "Mini News" features in full and the complete versions of "The Pool" and "The Office" documentaries--the latter now looking like a brilliant premonition of the more famous Ricky Gervais vehicle. There's a rather dull Open University programme about the craft of TV journalism which uses extracts from The Day Today and is truthfully entitled "Po-Faced Analysis". Best of all is the complete original Pilot episode, plus a marvellous post-programme update in which Morris telephones a befuddled American McDonald's employee as if he was a crewmember of a sunken US submarine. Picture and sound quality are standard for a BBC show from the early 1990s. In summary: dispassionate. --Mark Walker

DVD Description
Anchorman Christopher Morris had been fired from ITN in 1989 for using make up on disaster victims, but was hired by The Day Today for precisely the same reasons... Collatallie Sisters single-handedly revolutionized business news with the graphic finance arse... Sportscaster Alan Partridge was amiable enough... and Peter O'Hanraha'hanranhan won repeated awards for dreadful persistance.

Contains all the episodes from Series 1 and 2 of The Day Today

Special Features

• Mini News
  
• Pilot Episode
  
• Extended Scenes: The Pool & The Office
  
• Po-faced Analysis (Open University programme)
  
• Easter Eggs

DVD Technical Information:

• Total running time: 180 minutes
  
• Region Code: 2
  
• Subtitles: English

Customer Reviews

Those are the headlines, God I wish they weren't
Yes, well, I don't normally write about things with loads of reviews already like this but I was just reading through them and didn't understand half of the things they say. Never mind.

The Day Today is a brilliantly observed spoof news programme. Featuring Chris Morris, one revered by his fans and unheard of by most normal people, it also contains Alan Partridge's TV debut and a strong cast and writing team that almost all went on to become big names in "alternative" comedy.

It's main strength is it's accuracy. Ever since watching it, I can rarely watch the news without laughing at how like TDT these programmes are. Morris's arrogant anchorman is more like Jeremy Paxman than Jeremy Paxman, and his various reporters' voices are absolutely spot on, reading their reports with solemn self-important authority. The rest of the cast are brilliant too, most have been mentioned but I absolutely adore Rebecca Front as Babara Wintergeen and the way she pouts at the end of all of her reports!

They also manage to satarise the whole "fly on the wall" documentary brilliantly, as well as the soap opera and MTV. All in just six episodes!

Other than that, the humour is very surreal, with reports about the Bank of England losing the pound and making an emergency currency based on the Queen's eggs. Sounds strange? You should hear some of the headlines, "Bouncing Elephantitus destroys central Portsmouth" being one of my favourites.

The extras are very good, though it's a shame rumours of a cast commentary in character turned out to be false. Still, the extended versions of 'the pool' and 'the office' are nice, and the Pilot episode is very interesting.

I would recommend this whole-heartedly to anyone, I'm sure everyone would recognise all the characters in it from the news and find it funny. Fans of silly surreal humour would like it particularly, as would anyone who finds self-important news programmes annoying! Believe the hype, this is a satirical gem.

Ich nichten lichten
Superb. Just superb. This is comedy at its absolute best. The writing spawned a new generation of comedy that we've seen in shows such as Alan Partridge, Smack The Pony and Father Ted and Chris Morris is nothing short of a comedy genius. His parody of Kurt Cobain (singing an ad campaign for "Panty Smile" sanitary products) and his rendition of "Uzi Lover" make this box set worth the money alone.

Other gems include Alan Partridge reporting live from the rally driving championships, Barbara Wintergreen's report from Florida state penitentiary and the coverage on the outbreak of "War!". But there are really far too many classic moments to list. It's all one long laugh from beginning to end and is a must for anybody who enjoys top class comedy!

Peter, you're lying in a news grave!

Surely one of the funniest programmes in years
I love this DVD! I honestly can't stop watching it and I love the names of people like Beverley Smax and Peter O Hanrahanrahan. The headlines, too, are just brilliant. If you have the DVD, here's something to look out for:

Insert Disc 1. When option to select episode comes up, press enter. Then press Top Menu and wait. You can hear a conversation between Chris Morris and Peter O Hanrahanrahan about 9/11. It's a bit sick but still deadly funny.

Fully deserves 5/5