Britain Today Tonight
CHANNEL 4, 10.00PM AND 10.30PM
The history of current-affairs spoofery on TV is a chequered one, with both towering peaks – Drop the Dead Donkey, The Day
Today – and deep troughs – the largely forgotten
Broken News and No Signal. Into the fray strides Kayvan Novak, a formidably talented mimic and performer whose material hasn’t always matched up to his comic gifts. Fonejacker, for example, his E4 crankcaller comedy, never quite reached its potential. Britain Today Tonight is a timely take on the hysterical brand of news (mis)reporting, complete with venal, cocksure anchor and inept and/or biased reporters with an uncanny habit of seizing the wrong end of the stick in their every encounter with the general public. Each major role is taken by Novak (who also wrote the series) in a confident, impressive showcase both for prosthetic make-up and his own arsenal of accents and personas. Some moments fall flat – the discussion on the gender-pay gap topples from mischief into poor taste – but superspook Sir Nicholas Charles attempting to decode yoof speak (“who is LMFAO?”) is a treat and action-man reporter Jon Donovan probably merits a series of his own. Episode two follows.