Drop the Dead Donkey (1990)

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.