Edgy, brilliant TV (Brass Eye)

Member Name: paulie1975

Product:	Brass Eye
Date:	01/02/09 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Satirical, funny, questioning, dark, thoughtful

Disadvantages: More offensive than Paul Daniels in his pants

I will begin by simply saying for me Chris Morris is fantastic, his television, radio shows and his spoof newspaper columns pretty much always hit the mark for me, I know the humour goes so far past the line of decency that you can't even see the line, but his work also goes beyond comedy and takes satire really deeply into issues that are taboo or unspeakable.

Brasseye - What is it about?

Brasseye was a series of mock documentaries fronted by Chris Morris, his character is very similar to his serious and yet absurd news anchor man on the day to day, he asks ridiculous questions in a serious manner and by doing that gets some quite astonishing answers from real people.

As much a satirisation of the media demonisation of anything and everything as it was simply a mockumentary of programmes like Kilroy and Trisha, the programmes had a serious theme each week and through fictional studio debate and interviews with real people who weren't aware it was a spoof some astonishing and at times unmissable television was created.

Written by Morris with help from Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews (Father Ted, Big Train), David Quantick and Peter Baynham, the script was so close to the bone that there were actually parliamentary debates about it and media coverage demanding it be banned, which certain sketches (Peter Sutcliffe, the Musical) were.

One of the best episodes, was the one about drugs, with the fictional drug Cake, which caused 'Shatner's Bassoon', Morris persuaded serious celebrities including Bernard Manning, Rolf Harris and several MP's to record messages for a charity advert admonishing Cake and an MP even offered to table a question about Cake in parliament, this was amazing to see how easily people could be duped into spearheading media campaigns based on what they were told rather than researching and making their own opinions. Other episodes centred on Aids with the famous question, 'Do you have good aids or bad aids' and the infamous Paedophilia episode, designed to mock the moral panic whipped up by the media it, again celebrities were used and Morris persuaded Dr Fox to explain that Paeodophiles have more genes scientifically in common with crabs than with you or I, other MP's and celebrities were heard explaining how paedophiles had used the internet to emit scents through keyboards that trapped children, nonsensical but perfectly encapsulating the media hysterics which were whipping up panic to the point that a Paediatrician in Wales was almost lynched because her job title sounded similar!

The show was strongly edited once Channel 4 realised how controversial it was and to be honest you can understand why, Morris was so upset with the channel for editing out the Sutcliffe sketch that just prior to one add break, he edited in a subliminal message calling Michael Grade the then Head of Channel 4 'a c**t'. That was to be the end of Brasseye, still available on DVD thankfully and still as relevant in this media age as ever.

Summary: I'll never take Cake again after watching this