--- title: "The Day Today" year: 1994 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-day-today" fi1m_score: 86 critics_score: 84 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-18T07:42:19.104444+00:00" updated: "2026-09-18T07:42:19.718398+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Day Today (1994) Created by Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci · 29m · Comedy **Fi1m score: 86** · Critics 84 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* Britain’s most terrifying newsreader and its worst sports correspondent share a desk for six weeks and nobody stops them > Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci’s spoof bulletin gets every detail of the real thing right and then fills it with lunacy. It is as funny as anything British television made in its decade, and slightly slower whenever it leaves the studio desk. ## Synopsis A half-hour television news bulletin, broadcast in six weekly editions from 19 January 1994, anchored from a glass-and-chrome studio by Christopher Morris (Chris Morris), a presenter who treats every story as an insult to him personally. Around the desk sit his regulars: economics correspondent Peter O’Hanraha-hanrahan (Patrick Marber), who has not read the report he is about to summarise; Collaterlie Sisters (Doon Mackichan), who delivers the markets in front of graphics nobody could explain; Sylvester Stuart (David Schneider) on the weather; American reporter Barbara Wintergreen (Rebecca Front), filing from the United States; and sports presenter Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan), who does not understand sport. Each edition runs headlines, live interviews, outside broadcasts and computer-animated title sequences, all in the format of a real evening bulletin, with the stories replaced by nonsense delivered with a straight face. ## Review *The Day Today* is a news programme that never happened, made by people who had watched the real ones closely. It ran for six half-hour episodes from 19 January 1994, created by Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci. The idea has been copied ever since: take the studio, the graphics, the theme music and the presenters of a serious bulletin, keep every one of them exactly right, and change only what the words mean. It is as funny as anything British television made in that decade, and it has a nastiness that stops it being cosy. We recommend it warmly, with the caveat that it is weaker away from the desk. Morris anchors as Christopher Morris, a man who treats the news as something he owns and the audience as people who have wandered into his house. He barks the headlines, sneers at his correspondents and, in one sequence, talks two countries into declaring war live on air because the story plays better that way. The scene we keep returning to is smaller: Patrick Marber’s economics correspondent, Peter O’Hanraha-hanrahan, has not read the report he is meant to be explaining, and Morris makes him admit it, item by item, to camera. We winced. We have seen real presenters do a gentler version of this to real reporters, and the sketch knows it. Doon Mackichan’s Collaterlie Sisters reads the markets in front of animated charts that mean nothing, calm as a woman who has never been asked what they mean. Rebecca Front’s Barbara Wintergreen files soft-focus American reports on the grimmest subjects with a small bright smile. David Schneider’s Sylvester Stuart does the weather as if it were a personal achievement. Michael Alexander St John, as the announcer, ties it together in a voice that could sell you a war. And there is Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge, the sports presenter who knows nothing about sport: a man at a desk, out of his depth, refusing to notice. None of this would work if the programme looked cheap, and it does not. Dennis De Groot and Jo Sutherland’s studio has the blue light, the raised desk and the wall of screens of a real mid-nineties newsroom. The title sequence, all swooping globes, is scored by Morris and Jonathan Whitehead with the sort of drums and brass that announce a state funeral. Steve Gandolfi and David Fairhead cut at the speed of an actual bulletin, so that captions and tickers go past before you can check them, and Andrew Gillman directs it dead straight. Lindsey McLean and Marcia Stanton put everyone in shoulders and ties wide enough to be broadcast from. We laughed until it hurt at a headline about a headmaster suspended for using a big-faced child as a satellite dish, and that is the level the writing sustains for most of its running time: a sentence with the exact rhythm of a news item and none of its sense. Eight writers are credited, Morris, Iannucci, Marber, Front, Schneider, Coogan, Peter Baynham and Ludo Rabl, and the density shows. A first viewing will miss a third of the jokes because they are in the corner of the screen. The weaker material is where it leaves the desk. A fly-on-the-wall spoof about a municipal swimming pool runs at the pace of the programmes it mocks, which is the point and the problem; it is accurate and slow. A few of the location pieces outlast their single idea. And six editions of the same structure means that by the fifth the format has stopped surprising you, even if the lines have not. Earlier newsroom comedies were sitcoms with jokes about the news; this is the news with the jokes hidden inside. Watch it one episode at a time, twenty-nine minutes each, and not immediately before the actual news, which will look worse afterwards. *Fi1m score 86, published 18 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (5) - **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): The critic praises the show's groundbreaking satire of news media and its enduring brilliance as a fully realized parallel world of absurdity. They single out the meticulous attention to detail in presentation, graphics, and characters like Alan Partridge for particular acclaim. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jan/17/the-day-today-chris-morris-alan-partridge-changed-satire-forever) - **Empire**, Adam Smith (85/100, inferred): The critic praises the show's timeless satire that attacks news programme tropes and clichés, highlighting its Python-inspired skits and attention to technical form as the masterstroke. It notes the show's influence on creating Alan Partridge and leading to Brass Eye. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/day-today-review/) - **The AV Club**, Brandon Nowalk (85/100, inferred): The critic praises the series as a masterful satire that deconstructs the pomposity and sensationalism of TV news formats through absurd yet credible-seeming segments. They highlight its sharp writing, memorable characters like Alan Partridge, and lasting influence on later comedies by the same team. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-day-today-let-the-air-out-of-tv-news-1798274567) - **The Independent** (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the series very cynical, very clever and very funny in its scorn for television news conventions and institutions. They single out the loving and expensive detail of the pastiche, especially the precise mimicry of American novelty news reports, for praise. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/review-undermining-the-fabric-of-our-society-1408117.html) - **Den of Geek**, Jenny Sanders (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it one of the funniest and greatest comedy series of the 1990s, a biting satire that perfectly skewers current affairs programmes with surreal headlines and sketches. They single out its prescient take on news presentation and the launch of Alan Partridge as standout elements. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-day-today-a-modern-day-classic/) ## Details - **Created by:** Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci - **Creator:** Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci - **Director:** Andrew Gillman - **Writer:** Chris Morris, David Schneider, Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front, Patrick Marber, Peter Baynham, Ludo Rabl - **Editor:** David Fairhead, Steve Gandolfi - **Music:** Chris Morris, Jonathan Whitehead - **Production design:** Dennis De Groot, Jo Sutherland - **Costume design:** Lindsey McLean, Marcia Stanton - **Producer:** Peter Fincham, Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris - **Cast:** Chris Morris as Christopher Morris / Various Characters; Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge / Various Characters; Patrick Marber as Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan / Various Characters; Rebecca Front as Barbara Wintergreen / Various Characters; Doon Mackichan as Collaterlie Sisters / Various Characters; David Schneider as Sylvester Stuart / Various Characters; Michael Alexander St John as Announcer (voice); Sarah Wynter as Janet Breen - **Runtime:** 29m - **Release (the US):** 19 January 1994 - **Genres:** Comedy ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. ## If you liked this - *Brass Eye* (1997), Fi1m 86: Morris takes the same method and points it at people who deserved it more — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/brass-eye.md) - *Network* (1976), Fi1m 86: A newsreader loses his mind on air and the ratings go up; nobody laughs — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/network.md) - *Drop the Dead Donkey* (1990), Fi1m 74: The newsroom as sitcom, written the week it aired, still sharper than most — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/drop-the-dead-donkey.md) - *The Thick of It* (2005), Fi1m 89: Iannucci moves from the studio to Whitehall and the shouting gets louder — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/the-thick-of-it.md) - *Broadcast News* (1987), Fi1m 84: The American newsroom taken seriously, with the vanity Morris spent six weeks mocking — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/broadcast-news.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/the-day-today