10 Best One Season Wonder TV Shows

8. Brass Eye

Free Agents
Channel 4

Chris Morris projects tend not to stick around for too long. The restless writer is ever eager to avoid running an idea into the ground, and his more incendiary work often has only a narrow window before they’re run off the airwaves. This was particularly true for Brass Eye, his 1997 series lacerating the state of British current affairs programming.

Each episode focussed on a hot button issue - Sex, Crime, Drugs - and spoofed the brash, entertainment-focussed style of modern news shows to ludicrous effect. There were endless graphics, confrontational presenters, baseless assumptions, and a constant combative, accusational style.

Morris also sent up celebrities better than almost anyone before or since. Gary Lineker, Bernard Manning, Phil Collins and more were brought in to lend support to whatever ludicrous topic was the focus of that week’s show: the drug “cake”; the genetics of crabs.

The show was a lightning rod for controversy from the off, with the still shocking Paedogeddon special in 2001 remaining one of the most complained about broadcasts in British history. Whether or not Morris wanted to continue, it would have taken a network with real guts to keep this up.

 
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Yorkshire-based writer of screenplays, essays, and fiction. Big fan of having a laugh. Read more of my stuff @ www.twotownsover.com (if you want!)