The Day Today - 'a film held in reserve for times of crisis'

[Guy]

On a rewatch, it recently struck me just how fucking amazing the 'This is Britain' film from The Day Today is.

It's just a continuous succession of inventively absurd visual gags, all executed and performed beautifully. The whole thing is shot and directed as a pitch-perfect effigy of a glossy Saatchi & Saatchi presentation on behalf of the government.

The rousing music, plus the insistent deception of the "it's fine" message at the end still manages to send a chill down my spine, as if the bomb really is about to drop.

There's not much point to this thread really, I just wanted to revel in the unnerving precision insanity of a brilliant piece of TV comedy.

All programmes have now been suspended

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

I actually grew up relatively near Wabznasm.

[Big Jack McBastard]

The Sunday Chillout DVD in TMWL

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I think what makes this, in the context of the episode is how it doesn't feature a single member of the central cast. No Morris (though he does the voiceover, granted), no Coogan, no Front, No Schneider, no Marber, no Mackichan, not even Iannucci or Baynham. And even though it is full of little amusing vignettes the actors are all brought in especially. I can't remember any of them even featuring in the supporting cast in other episodes.

This is another thing that simply would never happen, or even occur to anyone as an idea, who was making such a programme today.

"In this glittering scene, this perfect fusion of man and mineral" is one of the finest moments of comedy pastiche ever written. Channelling the cadence and themes of Blake, Orwell and Shakespeare, it's utterly insanely good, and it comes crashing on the shore in time with the crescendo of 'Jupiter', the perfectly chosen section based on the hymn 'I Vow to Thee My Country'.

Next- look at the mixed messages and tonally off-centre images we are treated to:

- Bankers playing childrens games outside the front of the bank
-A policeman smoking weed in the company of a black woman
-A paramedic kissing an old woman on the cheek like a small child
-A friend recklessly tossing a baby over a fence to its mother
-A series of silly named places
-A man with a joke shop toy squirting a doctor in the face as he's giving someone bad news
-A series of 10 year old boys offer lighters to a man searching his pockets for one
-A fight broken up by the unveiling of the union jack
-A homoerotic sillhouette of two men holding hands into the distance, while an old woman waves reassurringly

So keenly aware of the nebulous bullshit we hang our supposed national identity from, and gently subversive of a series of expectations.