The Day Today - Programme Format

Programme Format

Each episode is presented as a mock news programme, and the episodes rely on a combination of ludicrous fictitious news stories, covered with a serious, pseudo-professional attitude. Each episode revolves around one or two major stories, which are pursued throughout the programme, along with a host of other stories usually only briefly referred to. In addition, the programme dips into other channels from time to time, presents clips of fictitious upcoming BBC programmes, and conducts street interviews with members of the public, in a segment titled "Speak Your Brains".

The programme frequently comments on other programmes, most often a spoof soap opera called The Bureau, set in a 24-hour bureau de change, incorporating clichéd soap opera-style plots, which apparently produces and airs 2,000 episodes between the first and third segments of The Day Today and becomes a hit in Italy. The programme also contains clips from a spoof documentary series called "The Pool", featuring a public swimming pool and its neurotic staff (Morris' character says that the general British public probably consider public buildings 'a load of old rubbish', so The Day Today had funded a documentary on every one in the country). The final episode features reports from the fictitious documentary "The Office", which follows office workers as they go on a retreat with an efficiency expert, a segment which predates the 2001 comedy series The Office by seven years. Other non-news segments of the programme include the occasional "physical cartoons" of current events set in the studio. Chris Morris frequently parodies entirely separate channels, including "RokTV" (spoofing MTV); reporting on the fictitious and psychotically violent African-American rapper "Fur-Q"; and "Genutainment", a segment which reports on a sheepdog averting a helicopter disaster (a parody of the real-life rescue show 999).

The programme occasionally features producer Armando Iannucci and writer Peter Baynham, the latter playing Gay Desk reporter, Colin Poppshed, among other characters. John Thomson, Graham Linehan, Tony Haase, and Minnie Driver also appear. Michael Alexander St John provides the voiceover stings, as he did in On the Hour.

Much of the programme's humour derives from its excessively brash style of reporting, and its unnecessarily complex format. The opening sequence of each episode is lengthy and complicated, a parody of the overuse of computer-generated credit sequences on news programmes, and the theme tune is deliberately overdramatic and self-important. One episode presents false adverts featuring depictions of The Day Today being broadcast in bizarre locations; the night sky over Paris, the sides of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, the International Hackenbacker Building in Chicago, and the handles of 400 million petrol pumps across the globe; this is a parody of CNN International's promotions advertising the hotels in which the channel could be seen. Morris presents aggressively, often arguing with reporters and guests on-air and at one stage provoking a war between Australia and Hong Kong.

The programme frequently lambasts Conservative politicians in office at the time of the programme's production. Statesmen repeatedly lampooned by the series include John Major, Michael Heseltine (who had his picture swapped with a Bosnian old woman), Chris Patten, Douglas Hurd, Virginia Bottomley, Michael Portillo, and former American President Bill Clinton.

Each episode is brought to an interrupted ending with just enough time to quickly overview the following day's newspapers (a parody of Jeremy Paxman on BBC2's Newsnight) printed with absurd headlines such as Lord Mayor's pirouette in fire chief wife decapitation, and a final humorously misused video. Each episode ends in a familiar style for news reports, with the camera panning out as the studio lights dim on Morris. Instead of shuffling his papers in clichéd newsreader style, Morris takes advantage of the dimming lights to perform bizarre activities; putting lots of pens in his jacket pockets, placing a tourniquet around his arm in preparation to inject heroin, removing his normal hair to reveal long blonde locks underneath, and, in the last episode, prostrating himself before the newsdesk.