Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #921 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

A quick look at the Currency Kidney...
The humour travels round with you it's so darn good.

I can't go on holiday without thinking 'This is a high clarrrss bureau de chawnge!' at least once, or see the weather forecast in the lift without thinking 'Breezes', or listen to Phil Collins without thinking 'Ahpumpedherfulloflead, becauseshewasan....Uuuuuzi luvvvah.'

Hilarious
I remember when this was originally shown on television and how I laughed at the silly news stories. Alan Partridge is even here presenting his sports news (his horse racing commentary is so funny I soiled myself). The Day Today is just brilliant and is a fine addition to any DVD collection. It is as is the case with comedy not going to be to everyones taste but I suspect the majority will find this a very amusing DVD indeed.

The Hidden Extras are Comedy Gold
I loved this programme when it was on and when I bought this DVD I was shocked to find I still loved it. The bullied vicar, and rogue dentists still had me laughing out loud.

As for one of the hidden extras I only discovered it as I got called away from the DVD just as I put it in and when I came back it was to hear Chris Morris on the phone with Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan who was supposed to be in New York on 11 September for a meeting in a 'tower'. If you recall how inept Peter was you can imagine how the conversation goes.

All in all a great buy.