Alan Partridge: Every TV Show And Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

The Day Today, and its predecessor radio series, On The Hour, is a classic of satirical British comedy. Not only is it a razor-sharp sendup of news broadcasting, but it also helped launch a whole host of careers for performers and writers who remain our most successful satirical comedians today (most notably creators Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci).

So, why is it only at number 9 here? Because, to be quite honest, Partridge does not particularly stand out here. It's Morris himself as belligerent anchor "Christopher Morris" who is very much the star even amongst a talented ensemble. Partridge, here characterised as a sports reporter with only a passing acquaintance with many of the sports on which he reports and a tendency for awkward gaffes and verbal diarrhoea, is a more minor figure.

Partridge's sketches in The Day Today are fairly amusing, but they don't really reach the heights of what the character could be when properly developed in later shows that focused more on him specifically.

Watching The Day Today without any knowledge of what was to come, you would not imagine that the sports reporter would turn out to be one of the greatest and most enduring comedy characters in British TV history, still feeling fresh and full of equal parts cringe and hilarity almost thirty years later.