I recently had the opportunity to watch Paedogeddon, the extra-long, one-off comeback special of an unbelievably funny British series called Brass Eye. The special focuses on the panicky approach of news media to the issue of paedophilia. It wasn't until I had finished watching that I found out it ran back in 2001, with the original series airing in 1997. From its style and the intensity of its satire, I would have pegged Paedogeddon as being made, at the very oldest, in 2007.
Aside from the rapid-fire jokes and deadpan delivery, what makes Paedogeddon so amazing is how effectively it parrots the increasingly needless flash of cable news networks. Overblown graphics bombard the screen in front of a faux high-tech set full of people being directed to look busy.
Watching Brass Eye, I couldn't help but compare it to the standard of American political/news satire, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. These American programs take a different approach to satirical humor, both because they have to produce four days' worth of content every week and because they simply take a different stylistic approach. On The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart relies on comedic pauses, self-conscious puns and righteous indignation to carry the humor of his show. While this may not afford The Daily Show the sheer density of laughs on any given Brass Eye special, it does allow for some breathing room and a chance at ironic journalistic integrity.
Brass Eye is also considerably more biting with its satire, often veering into the real world to coax public officials and celebrities into embracing the absurdity of alarmist news-making policies. If Sasha Baron Cohen were to lampoon Fox News, the product would look like Brass Eye.
Brass Eye is just one of many programs created by comic visionary Chris Morris. After a stint as a mainstream radio DJ, Morris went on to perform with some of the greatest comedians in Britain. Most notably Morris collaborated with Steve Coogan in the radio program On The Hour, eventually creating a televised version called The Day Today which was one of Coogan's breakthrough platforms. At least one of Morris's collaborators has seen mainstream success Stateside; Simon Pegg of Shaun of the Dead fame was a regular on Brass Eye just two years shy of his own smash hit, Spaced.
Brass Eye was a short series with an initial run of only six episodes and the Paedogeddon special in 2001. Each episode covered one topic in the fashion of scare-mongering news reports, the first of which was "Animals". The most popular episode was the second, "Drugs", a risky and extremely controversial hour of television that made fools of many public officials both during the program and afterward when they attempted to condemn the show's jokes as irresponsible and offensive.
To date, the Paedogeddon special has one of the highest counts of formal complaints in Channel 4 history. I honestly can't think of an American TV network that would even try to carry such a show, so us Yanks are going to have to settle for the import.