Brass Eye was a brilliant TV show satirizing the news. Hard to believe season 1 was 1997. Totally called so much about media crazed panics.

CW - All the shows are truely about the subjects listed and can go past edgelord.

I can’t get any of the invidious links to work so here is all the Brass Eyes on daily motion, which hopefully work OK:

S01 E01 - Animals

S01 E02 - Drugs

S01 E03 - Science

S01 E04 - Sex

S01 E05 - Crime

S01 E06 - Decline

Season 2 only has 1 episode because it got their asses CANCELLED.

S02 E01 - Paedo-Geddon

One thing you have to understand about all the Brass Eye episodes is that not everyone involved knows they are on a comedy show. All the people doing PSA-type bits are UK celebs and their participation is totally in earnest. There are multiple MPs as well as media people who are tricked into advocating totally crazy shit. The absolute best ep for this is Drugs. It shows the lack of vetting famous people do when they are asked to lend support to something. The deceit was not intricate and many clues were intentionally left to allow the people to realize it was a scam. For example in the Drugs episode they all parrot that the new drug is from Czechoslovakia even though that country hadn’t existed for a while at the time. Also Chris Morris didn’t hide the fact it was his TV show and he was known to do these kinds of shows previously.

They got this guy to seriously say pedophiles are genetically crabs and then symbolically hammer a nail through a crab to fight child sex abuse

  • Flyberius [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    “Here we can see a paedophile disguised as a semi detached house.”

    And the one where they launch a paedophile into the sun but later find out that there was accidentally a 10 year old child on board too.

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Philomena Cunk is the softer and safer Brass Eyes and focuses more on the prestige documentary angle of British media. Brass Eyes does the same but for the fox Newses of England. Trying to help here. Also maybe CW, I know.the ending of the drugs episode really bothered an ex who wasn’t comfortable seeing someone inject drugs even if it’s just a realistic simulation.

    • glans [it/its]@hexbear.netOP
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      4 months ago

      Ya if you don’t want to see stuff about drugs, don’t want the drugs one. That’s what I was trying to say about the shows all being about what they are about.

      That’s the scene about the jam/jelly company where they are all taking so much drugs ya? For the 90s it is a scene of drug use apparently done by people who were pretty well acquainted with drugs.

      I saw Cunk on netflix, she is pretty good and definitely in the same tradition but not as cutting.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        There’s a difference between the vague notion of atv episode about drugs and the host fairly realistically tying off, her parents were heroin addicts

  • glans [it/its]@hexbear.netOP
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    4 months ago

    Loosing an arm wrestle to someone with “good AIDS” caught through a blood transfusion

    But turned out he had Bad Gay AIDS oops

  • Breath_Of_The_Snake [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Thank you for collecting it all and making a post. I’ve seen clips before and intend to binge this. It rules.

    Edit: Oh shit, you weren’t kidding about the cw stuff. E1 “animals” almost immediately had a dude slapping a corpse on a hook.

  • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Season 2 only has 1 episode because it got their asses CANCELLED.

    Paedo-geddon was a special, there were never plans to make a full second series. Arguably the tabloids did try to cancel the people behind it in the modern sense, but it didn’t really work.

  • pastalicious [he/him, undecided]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    About ten years ago I was obsessed with everything involving Chris Morris. The Day Today and Jam were also incredible… but if I remember correctly it was at times a little internet edge Lordy. I want to believe it was actually skeweing edge Lordiness but I don’t know.