Television
Funnier than the news
Martyn Harris
When Monty Python began to parody the TV news in the late Sixties there was a sense of shock alongside the giggles. People like Peter Cook had already satirised news- casters, but the conventions of news pre- sentation: the urgent music, the spinning globe, the solemn handover to our corre- spondent in Blah — these things had never been held up for inspection and ridicule. They were part of the invisible furniture of television, unconsciously evolving with the medium and as unquestioned as the bound- aries of the screen itself. But the more you gazed at them the odder they became.
It had little effect on the news itself though, which over the intervening 20 years, and with the steady seepage of pre- sentational tics from CNN and Sky, has become ever more stylised, and corre- spondingly emptier of information. Franti- cally busy graphics, celebrity weathermen, 'human interest' stories, mock-informal interviews between anchorman and corre- spondent, absurdly extended sign-offs from 'Gavin Esler; BBC News; outside the Clin- ton White House; in the snow; waiting for something to happen' — these things are now the norm of the big evening news shows, with the honourable exception of Channel Four. The 'mission to explain', brushed aside by Greg Dyke, Roland Rat and Anne Diamond is itself merely a comic footnote to the TV history of the 1980s.
The news is a fat target waiting to be punctured in fact, and The Day Today (BBC2, Wednesday, 9 p.m.) is a deadly accurate exercise in cluster bombing, from the absurdly prolonged opening sequence of spinning globes, to the newscaster's ritu-
al fussing with his desk equipment at the end — which turns out on closer inspection to be preparation for a shot of cocaine. It
comes from the same group which pro- duced the brilliant On The Hour on Radio
4, with Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge, our correspondent in the car coat, and Chris Morris as the back-slashed, shark- toothed anchorman.
The basic idea is to present extremely silly stories in an extremely serious manner: underlining how much attention we pay to non-events and spurious assertions out of no more than mindless acquiescence with the techniques of false authority. Thus, the headlines this week are: 'Portillo's teeth removed to boost pound! Exploded cardi- nal preaches sermon from fish tank! Where now for the man raised by puffins?' (This last announced over a clip of Duke Hussey waddling from his limousine).
Human interest is served with stories like the condemned man in the USA who wants to die like Elvis Presley. Environmental news covers, 'The giant pasta slick which has washed up on Devon beaches, threat- ening seagulls, wading birds and starfish'. Rock news explores an allegation that some Bob Dylan songs were performed years before the singer's birth (clip of George Formby singing Subterranean Homesick Blues). On a more serious note Fur Q, the latest rap artist from the States, is quizzed over live performances of his new single Uzi Love during each of which five members of the audience are killed. A Rolling Stone journalist avers that All this fuss is preposterous. The deaths are clearly intended to be ironic'.
It is idiotic stuff, but the timing is so sharp, the intonation so accurate and the technical mimicry so crisp that I never lost patience for a moment. By rights a pro- gramme as good as this should finish off News At Ten and the Nine O'Clock News. The producers should pull the plugs and slink home in shame, but they won't, of course. This week I listened, with sagging jaw, to a real 'news' story of some obscure US ice skater whose bodyguard has kneecapped her closest rival, and another about an underclass American girl who has chopped off her husband's penis. The paro- dists are having to run just to keep up.
'These films always scare me.'
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