The Day Today and Brass Eye were controversial in their time. But a lot of the depicted surrealism doesn’t seem so strange in 2019. In this pilot, you see Chris Morris without the slicked-back hair he chose for the final version and a middle section involving a round table political discussion. It’s very rough around the edges and some of it doesn’t hit as hard to the comedy bone but there is one funny segment.
A “submarine” was found “at the bottom of the Pacific” and The Day Today had successfully contacted one of the men on the vessel. Of course none of this was true and Morris had actually pranked an American McDonald’s employee who was oblivious. This was standard for Morris who regularly pranked people on the radio and infamously used the technique on Brass Eye. His acts involved celebrities and even a member of parliament who was duped into advocating a crackdown on “cake”, a fake drug created for the show.