Chris Morris gives nonsense the voice of authority, and we rate his television satire highly. His longer stories work best when he lets us care about foolish people, though he can keep a joke going past its usefulness.
Fi1m perspective
In The Day Today (1994), Morris makes Patrick Marber’s economics correspondent admit that he has not read the report he is discussing. We winced because the bullying was familiar from real news programmes. Created with Armando Iannucci, the series gets the bulletin’s rhythms right before making its sentences ridiculous. Dennis De Groot and Jo Sutherland give him a newsroom with a raised desk and blue light; Andrew Gillman directs as though none of this needs explaining. This remains Morris’s strongest territory: people who sound certain while saying things that cannot survive a moment’s thought.
Brass Eye (1997) makes that certainty more intimidating, with Morris’s Ted Maul delivering nonsense as though disputing it would be a serious mistake. Director Michael Cumming keeps the performances sober, while Gary Dollner’s editing sends the next joke past before the previous one has quite registered. Morris and Jonathan Whitehead supply music equally persuaded of the programme’s importance. The precision is what makes it funny, although the aggression wears us down if we watch too much at once.
The move to sustained stories exposes a weakness: Morris sometimes repeats a joke instead of developing the people telling it. Nathan Barley (2005), created with Charlie Brooker, keeps demonstrating how foolish its media crowd are after we have understood. Danny Cohen’s flat grey streets and sickly green parties refuse them the glamour they imagine, and Julian Barratt gives the series someone worth caring about. There is sharp observation here, but by the fourth episode the series is repeating itself.
His first feature, Four Lions (2010), is the more rewarding change of direction. Writing with Simon Blackwell, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, Morris finds comedy in aspiring suicide bombers trying to agree with one another. Riz Ahmed helps make their need for approval troublingly human, without making their intended violence seem harmless. The middle repeats demonstrations of foolishness when the relationships need to change. Yet we care about these men, which makes the laughter harder to dismiss than the comfortable business of spotting another media idiot.
Directing episodes of Veep (2012) puts Morris’s interest in humiliation to work among other people’s characters. He is one of several directors keeping the camera alert to the flinch after an insult. His second feature, The Day Shall Come (2019), extends the interest in terrorism to FBI sting operations, with Armstrong again co-writing. Start with the news programmes, then try Four Lions with someone prepared to discuss why they were laughing.
Biography
Chris Morris is an English satirist, writer, director, actor and composer. He created and starred in the spoof news programmes The Day Today (1994) and Brass Eye (1997), on which he also wrote, produced and composed music. He appeared as Peter Baxendale Thomas in I'm Alan Partridge (1997).
Morris later directed and co-wrote the feature films Four Lions (2010) and The Day Shall Come (2019). His other television work includes co-writing and directing Nathan Barley (2005) and directing episodes of Veep (2012). He began his career in radio, contributing to BBC Radio 4's On the Hour.
