From Cicero to Aubrey Beardsley, human beings have never had to look too far for individuals touched by the hand of creative genius. But finding intellects so inspired, profound and insightful they actually manage to predict the future, is more of a challenge. George Orwell would be one; Chris Morris would be another.
Clearly, British comic talent is abundant. The lugubrious struggles of Tony Hancock, and frantic characterisations of John Cleese are so accomplished, there’s no reason to think they won’t be enjoyed for centuries yet. But Morris is a case apart. At the risk of finding myself in Pseuds Corner, I’d say he is much less a clown, and more akin to the distant great grandfather of satire: Euripides.
'Behind over-elaborate opening titles, an overly-loud signature tune played.'
Annually, in an event called the Festival of Dionysus, ancient Greek audiences would be presented with three tragic plays, back to back. To lift the mood, by then so weighty and moribund, the fourth and final performance would be something very different, a ‘satyr play’. These sarcastic comedies featured foolish, drunken and lecherous characters, shown as half men, half goats (Satyrs). However, the audience knew each one actually represented a high-ranking, public figure – and that playwrights like Euripides were using absurd comedy to hold a mirror to the face of society, and the feet of its most powerful citizens to the fire.
In 1992, when I first heard ‘On The Hour’, Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci’s spoof news show on Radio 4, I wasn’t quite so naive as to think I was hearing a real current affairs programme (although some listeners were fooled, as their complaints revealed). But neither did I know I was listening to ideas and formats which would later be adopted by genuine, serious producers.
‘On The Hour’ transferred to TV in 1994 as ‘The Day Today’, where the painfully keen, observational strength of Morris and his team – including the part-formed Alan Partridge, covering sport – was even more obvious. The devil was in the detail. Behind over-elaborate opening titles, an overly-loud signature tune played; not ludicrously extended, but just long enough to make play of the swollen egos and self-importance so prevalent in ‘heavyweight’ broadcasting. The satire began with the music.
There was so much to admire about ‘The Day Today’, that it would require a book to describe it all. So let me seize on the on-screen graphics as the perfect example of the concept’s brilliance. It’s no exaggeration to say these computer-generated images were actually more advanced than those of the news programming targeted by the show. Which was entirely the point. Morris foresaw an era where the colours and shapes framing the presentation would overtake the importance of the stories. To see how prescient he was, I’d urge you to watch an episode of ‘The Day Today’ followed immediately by fifteen minutes of Sky News, Fox News or CNN.
And just look at the presenters’ names: Collaterlie Sisters on finance, roving reporter Peter O’Hanraha-hanrahan, and US correspondent Barbara Wintergreen. By some quirk of reality, broadcast journalists do tend to have unusual handles – and yet I don’t think anyone spotted this before Morris and Iannucci.
‘Brass Eye’ came next. Not a million miles from ‘The Day Today, this time Chris turned on the investigative reporting of ‘Panorama’ and its ilk. In lesser hands, this may have come across as a demolition journalism, but it’s clear the work admired the crucial nature of the hard-nosed expose, while tearing into the unnecessary melodrama, hype and artifice in which it is often packaged. Again, ‘Brass Eye’ looks uncannily similar to the overly amplified documentaries we endure in 2014. Distracting, bombastic music; clumsy physical metaphors (I recall a large 3D map of the British Isles, lying in a hospital bed), and barely concealed contempt for the public.
Today, very few current affairs programmes avoid the use of social media to canvass comment from the audience. These messages are then relayed, ad nauseum, by the presenter. Morris spotted this trend, long before it swept the media, and beautifully dismantled it: “We’ve been reading your opinions which are stultifyingly dull and massively ill-informed. Keep them coming in.”
While I’ve only managed to highlight a handful of instances in which Chris Morris accurately predicted the absurdities, excesses and vanities of the modern media, they are legion. In the 21st century, you can see the sneer and attitude of Morris’s anchorman (also called Christopher Morris) in Jeremy Paxman. Chris prefigured The Jeremy Kyle Show in his mock AIDS debate (“Do you have good AIDS or bad AIDS?”); and in the highly controversial ‘Brass Eye Paedophile Special’, he foresaw the unhelpful hysteria now surrounding and hindering child protection.
Anybody who has seen his movie ‘Four Lions’ will also know that, thanks to his skill and perception, even terrorism has a darkly comic aspect.
Perhaps, when Morris sees his satire becoming truth, he fears he has failed. After all, for all his biting observation and searing illumination, the self-absorbed media still takes its output to the extremes he so pointedly ridiculed. Hopefully though, he simply allows himself a wry grin and a nod of the head, pleased to be in the unimpeachable company of Orwell and Euripides.
Magnus Shaw is a blogger, copywriter and consultant
Magnus Allan June 10th, 2014, at noon
I wonder if Chris Morris and his colleagues killed satire on British television for a generation. The programmes they created were so prescient that there has been very little more to say for the last few years. Newsnight doing dance routines is not a bad thing to change the mood, but there's certainly more than a hint of The Day Today about it.