Brass Eye Details

Brass Eye

I saw the infamous paedophilia episode of Brass Eye a couple of years ago, but now this has become so legendary, I was intrigued to see what the rest of the series was like. The original series was actually made in 1997 and the paedophilia special was made in 2001.

It is basically a spoof of shows such as Crimewatch and Tonight, which sensationalise stories and incite hatred, with Chris Morris playing a presenter, who asks loaded questions and generally twists everything. This sounds great but the trouble is, almost every review I have seen rates this as 5/5, so I was expecting a lot. After I watched one of the episodes I was starting to think that maybe the whole series has been over hyped since the special.

But this would be wrong. It is a brilliant spoof of some very difficult subjects which are largely untouched upon in this light, and it has some fantastic comic moments - the drugs episode is my favourite; e.g. Chris going to a drug dealer asking for made up drugs such a ‘triple sod’. It also has some brilliant quotes, e.g. “What do you think? You don’t have a clue, do you? You will after this VT!”.

What I am saying is, definitely rent it if you are a fan of satirical humour, like me, but don’t expect too much. I doubt they will show it on TV again anyway!

Is the medium the message? A passionate and committed showman, Morris doesn't waste time debating that notion: instead, in this must-see Channel 4 series from 1997, he gets right down to proving it, aggressively emptying his 'messages' of any kind of rational sense whatsoever to make the point. One of Morris?s strategies involves rounding up unsuspecting celebrities ? brimming with false sincerity and absurdly straight faces ? to mouth sham ?public service announcements? to hilarious effect. Patsies include singer Phil Collins, warning kids to use 'nonce sense' in avoiding paedophiles and comedian Bernard Manning, advising that a new Czech drug called Cake is ?a made-up drug?, while Aussie entertainer Rolf Harris describes side effects that include a horribly distended, ?Czech neck?. (MP David Amess would even go on to introduce a bill in Parliament prohibiting Cake. Once the joke was revealed, the enraged politician sued Channel 4 and won the right to have a disclaimer appear following each rebroadcast of the show.)

Elsewhere, Morris is alarmingly brilliant in impersonating the type of too-serious presenter/anchorman sadly familiar from mid-90s TV shows that treated important issues with sensationalistic (or worse, misinformed) bombast. In a Special Episode that plays on a then-recent frenzy in the UK where several people were mistakenly targeted as paedophiles, Morris?s self-righteous presenter soberly intones that child molesters? DNA has more in common with crabs than with human beings. ?There?s no real evidence for this?, Morris says of this in a classic line, ?but it is a scientific fact.?

Morris was a pioneer of the false-interview format, and still its best and funniest proponent. That so many celebrities, politicians and ?experts? fell for his finely crafted scenarios speaks as much to Morris?s skill as to the general debasement of information in the so-called Information Age. ?Brass Eye? is a treasure.