Michael Cumming makes absurd people look entirely at home on television. We rate his precision with performers and sets, especially in Brass Eye, though the relentless pressure there can become tiring.
Fi1m perspective
In Brass Eye (1997), Mark Heap holds on to his characters’ respectability while the things they say become ridiculous. Michael Cumming keeps him and the rest of the cast committed to these people, without letting them compete to be noticed. We laughed at Heap’s restraint, because he makes staying convincing look like an increasingly difficult job. This is Cumming’s strength as a comedy director: he takes care over how people behave even when what they are saying is absurd.
Cumming began directing short films for Tomorrow’s World and other BBC programmes in 1987, before Brass Eye became his first major comedy credit. It is a useful beginning to keep in mind when watching a satire so attentive to television’s habits of presenting information. The subsequent comedy work includes Snuff Box (2006), with Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher, and Toast of London (2012), whose pilot and all three series he directed. The formats change, but work with distinctive comic performers runs through this part of his career.
In Brass Eye, production designer Jonathan Paul Green gives Cumming surroundings that look as serious as their occupants think they are. That prevents us from dismissing the programme as a visibly makeshift spoof. Chris Morris’s forcefulness benefits from this care, and from the quieter playing around him. Cumming gives the writing a credible setting without asking the actors to announce every joke, allowing a restrained performance to hold its own against Morris.
The reservation is that Cumming and Morris sometimes refuse to ease off when a line needs room. Once we have learnt to distrust a confident speaker, another emphatic absurdity can repeat the point rather than sharpen it. The series would benefit from more changes of pace; the care in the performances and production does not make that accumulation any less tiring.
Oxide Ghosts: The Brass Eye Tapes (2017), assembled from his personal archive of unseen footage, returns to the programme from behind the scenes. King Rocker (2021), made with Stewart Lee about musician Robert Lloyd, takes his feature documentary work beyond that history. These give us other ways into his work, though our strongest recommendation remains the television satire. Start with Brass Eye, and leave a little time between episodes.
Biography
Michael Cumming is a British television and film director. He directed the 1997 Channel 4 series Brass Eye, his first comedy credit, and has since worked on series including Snuff Box (2006), Toast of London (2012–2015) and Toast of Tinseltown (2022).
He began his professional career at the BBC in the late 1980s, directing items for Tomorrow's World, after studying at Wolverhampton Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. Subsequent credits include The Mark Thomas Comedy Product, Rock Profile, The Mark Steel Lectures and Sandylands (2020–2021).
Cumming has also directed independent films, including the documentary Oxide Ghosts: The Brass Eye Tapes (2017), which received cinema screenings across the UK. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton in 2017.
