Copyright © 2026 OyList. All Rights Reserved.
Share
Items18
1
The Day Today (1994)
8.6/10on IMDb
First aired
The target is the self-importance of television news itself: the swooshing graphics, the anchor who treats every bulletin as a war, the reporters who cannot tell a story from a sound effect. Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci made one series of seven episodes for BBC2 in 1994, and it explains most news satire that came after it.
Because it mocks the grammar of a bulletin rather than the stories of the week, almost nothing has dated. Watch it once for the jokes, then watch a real news channel and notice how much of it now looks like a quotation.
More about The Day Today2
Brass Eye (1997)
8.6/10on IMDb
First aired
Where The Day Today mocked the bulletin, Brass Eye goes after the campaigning documentary and the moral panic it feeds on. Chris Morris moved to Channel 4 in 1997 and persuaded real celebrities to read out warnings about invented threats, most famously Cake, a made-up drug that ended up being raised in Parliament.
The drugs episode is the one to start with, because the trick it exposes is still in daily use: a famous face, a grave voice and no checking at all. The later special on the press panic over paedophilia remains the most uncomfortable half-hour here, and the most precise.
More about Brass Eye3
Drop the Dead Donkey (1990)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
A newsroom sitcom about what happens when a serious outfit is bought by a proprietor who wants tabloid numbers. GlobeLink News is the newsroom, Sir Royston Merchant is the new owner, and the staff spend six series on Channel 4, from 1990 to 1998, being pushed towards sensational reporting while trying to remember why they went into journalism.
The references to the week's news are the part that has aged; the character comedy is the part that has not. Ambitious presenters, cynical reporters and an editor fighting off the owner's influence are still the cast of most news operations, which is why it plays better now than its datelines suggest.
More about Drop the Dead Donkey4
Frontline (1994)
8.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The best comedy ever made about a commercial current affairs programme, and a useful corrective to anyone who thinks the genre's tricks are new. Rob Sitch plays Mike Moore, a self-centred, dim-witted anchor who never notices how he is being steered, while the producers around him chase ratings.
The team that became Working Dog shot the backstage scenes on hand-held camcorders, as if you were eavesdropping, for ABC TV from 1994, and the format does the satire: you watch a story being shaped in the office, then broadcast with a sincere face. Three series in all, and the cynicism of the production meetings has not dated a day.
More about Frontline5
The Colbert Report (2005)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
Stephen Colbert spent nine years on Comedy Central playing a blustering conservative cable news pundit drawn largely from Bill O'Reilly, and the joke was never just the opinions. It was the format: the self-regard, the catchphrase segments, the certainty that feeling something was as good as knowing it.
A spin-off of The Daily Show, it ran from 2005 to its final episode on 18 December 2014, 1,447 episodes in all. The specific news has dated, so dip into the segments that parody the machinery of opinion television rather than the week's stories; those are the ones that still describe what is on the news channels now.
More about The Colbert Report6
The Larry Sanders Show (1992)
8.5/10on IMDb
First aired
Not a talk show but a merciless sitcom about one, and the clearest look television has taken at its own back office. Garry Shandling drew on his own experience of hosting to play Larry Sanders, a paranoid and insecure late-night host, with an obsequious sidekick in Hank Kingsley and a fiercely protective producer in Artie keeping the machine running.
The target is the gap between the warm, easy chat the audience sees and the fear, flattery and bargaining behind it. That gap has not changed since 1992, which is why the backstage scenes still feel current.
More about The Larry Sanders Show7
Cunk on... (2018)
7.9/10on TMDB
First aired
Philomena Cunk is the presenter of the landmark documentary taken to its logical end: the walk-and-talk to camera, the portentous music, the expert nodding through a question that makes no sense. Diane Morgan plays her, Charlie Brooker created her, and the real joke is that the historians she interviews are genuine and have to answer.
Cunk on Britain is the tighter run; Cunk on Earth, a five-part tour of human civilisation, is the one most viewers outside the UK will find on Netflix. Both work as satire of the format rather than of any headline, so they will not date. Cunk on Cinema has been announced for the BBC and Netflix.
More about Cunk on...8
This Time with Alan Partridge (2019)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The evening magazine show gets the treatment it has always deserved: consumer affairs, current affairs, viewer interaction, a highbrow interview and a great deal of lightweight froth, all on one sofa. Alan Partridge is the stand-in co-host who wants the job permanently, and the comedy lives in the tiny on-air power struggles with Susannah Fielding's Jennie Gresham.
It ran for two series on BBC One from 2019, and it is the most precise thing the Partridge team has done about live broadcasting. Watch it for the links between items, where a single clumsy segue tells you everything about how these programmes are stitched together.
More about This Time with Alan Partridge9
The Newsroom (1996)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The Canadian one, from 1996, and not to be confused with Aaron Sorkin's earnest 2012 drama of the same name. Ken Finkleman writes and stars as George Findlay, the news director of a station modelled on the CBC, a petty, self-serving, image-obsessed manager far more interested in office politics and his own standing than in the news.
The satire is deadpan and bitter rather than broad, and it is aimed at public-service broadcasting's own vanities, which makes it a useful counterweight to the cable news parodies elsewhere here. It is often called one of the best media satires ever made, and the first series is the place to start.
More about The Newsroom10
W1A (2014)
7.8/10on IMDb
First aired
The BBC satirising the BBC, and doing it with alarming accuracy about management rather than programmes. Hugh Bonneville's Ian Fletcher arrives as Head of Values, surrounded by brand consultants, meetings about meetings and a vocabulary that means nothing while sounding like strategy.
A spin-off from Twenty Twelve, it ran for three series on BBC Two from 2014. It is gentler than most of this list, and the target is the institution's habit of talking to itself instead of its audience. Anyone who has sat through a rebrand will recognise every scene.
More about W1A11
Hot Metal (1986)
7.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The Fleet Street entry, and the one for anyone who wants the tabloid newsroom rather than the television one. A proprietor, Twiggy Rathbone, buys the dull, high-minded Daily Crucible and installs an editor, Russell Spam, to turn it into a sleazy, high-selling rag, with Robert Hardy among the stars.
Andrew Marshall and David Renwick wrote it for ITV from 1986, two series in all, and its picture of a paper trading seriousness for sales feels more pointed now than it did then. It is harder to find than most of this list, and worth the search.
More about Hot Metal12
The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
The classic American newsroom sitcom, and still the funniest portrait of a vain anchor. Mary Richards is an associate producer on the news at WJM-TV in Minneapolis, Ed Asner's gruff Lou Grant runs the room, and Ted Knight's Ted Baxter, incompetent and egotistical, reads every bulletin as though it were about him.
James L. Brooks and Allan Burns created it for CBS, where it ran from 1970 to 1977. It is gentler than anything else here, but the joke at its centre, that the face on camera matters more to the station than the journalism, is the one most of this list keeps retelling.
More about The Mary Tyler Moore Show13
Murphy Brown (1988)
7.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The original 1988 series, not the 2018 revival. Murphy Brown is the sharp-tongued, hard-as-nails star of a fictional network newsmagazine, FYI, back at work after a stay at the Betty Ford Clinic, and the comedy comes from a newsroom run on egos and rivalries.
It is a warmer, more conventional sitcom than the British entries, and its topical jokes have aged. What holds up is the portrait of network news as a business of celebrity, where who gets to ask the questions can matter more than the answers.
More about Murphy Brown14
NewsRadio (1995)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The most purely silly entry, and the one to pick when you want the newsroom without the sermon. WNYX is New York's number two news radio station, and the joke is that the news is almost incidental: the bulletins go out while the staff are absorbed in office politics and their tangled relationships.
It began in 1995 and works as satire by understatement. A newsroom that keeps functioning while nobody seems to be paying attention to the news is its own comment on the job.
More about NewsRadio15
30 Rock (2006)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
Network television mocking network television, at a joke rate few sitcoms have matched. Liz Lemon is head writer of a late-night variety show in New York, juggling the egos of her stars while the corporate side treats the programme as one more product to be synergised.
The target is less the news than the whole business of broadcasting: product placement, focus groups, executives who have never watched the show they run. The episodes that mock the network itself have aged far better than the celebrity cameos, and the early series are the sharpest.
More about 30 Rock16
Onion News Network (2011)
First aired
The 2011 IFC series that grew out of The Onion's web videos, and the closest American cousin to The Day Today. It is a straight-faced parody of television news, anchored by Brooke Alvarez, played by Suzanne Sena, a former host and reporter for E!, Extra and Fox News who knows exactly which register to hit.
The target is cable news as spectacle: urgency applied to nothing, delivered with total conviction. Its short run, which began with ten episodes in January 2011, is easy to watch in a weekend, and it was never around long enough to soften.
More about Onion News Network17
CNNNN: Chaser Non-Stop News Network (2002)
8.2/10on IMDb
First aired
The Chaser team's fake news channel, built to mock the sensationalism and bias of tabloid news programmes, at home and abroad. Its tagline, that opinion matters more than fact, has become less of a joke with every year since.
Two seasons and 19 episodes on ABC television in Australia earned a shared Logie for Most Outstanding Comedy Program. Some local references will be obscure to outsiders, but the parody of rolling news presentation travels well.
More about CNNNN: Chaser Non-Stop News Network18
Newswipe with Charlie Brooker (2009)
8.5/10on IMDb
First aired
Less a parody than a dissection: Charlie Brooker takes real news coverage apart on BBC Four and shows how the trick is done. A spin-off of his Screenwipe, it ran for two series in 2009 and 2010, with its sights fixed firmly on news and current affairs.
The individual stories have long gone, but the anatomy lessons on how not to report the news have not, and they make every other entry here funnier, because you can see exactly what is being sent up.
More about Newswipe with Charlie Brooker
