Brass Eye (1997)

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.