Britainology 71: Brass Eye
Milo and Nate do a deep dive into the classic British satire series Brass Eye by Chris Morris, and specifically the episode that got it cancelled - “Paedogeddon”
Comments (37)
If you want to be hugely depressed: go to Google and type "Why did Graham Linehan go crazy?" ..... and watch AI defend him...
Yeah...I'm sorry, but a 19-year-old who wants to r4pe a 15-year-old is absolutely in the same category. The differences in central nervous system development and physiological development are enormous at that age. It's twisted that men still cling to this wwii-era notion that this is normal. In my experience in the 90s, any college age guy trying to get with a high school kid was a walking red flag and someone to be avoided. Matt Gaetzes don't just spring into existence fully formed, they're enabled and given the blind eye turn by primarily male peers from school age onward.
Yo Irish person here. Linehan wasn't that involved in Repeal the 8th . Basically his (then) wiife had an awful time then he took stolen valour
What is the name of the BBC programme Nate mentions about 17 minutes or so into the pod?
there is no better humor than that which makes American's uncomfortable
Monkey Dust episode?
Does anyone have the source for that story Nate told about Michael Jackson recording the Simpsons? Beyond grim.
The American comedian they were trying to think of accused of traumatising child actors in what they were filming was Tiffany Haddish alongside Aries Spears. https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/tiffany-haddish-and-aries-spears-deny-child-grooming-allegations/news-story/527f3c46391ab08d6738b041115e7e6c
I once tried to show Brass Eye to some friends and for some reason that’s completely indecipherable to me now I thought Pedogeddon would be the best episode to show them first (maybe because me and my friends are Australian and some of the other stuff seemed too reliant on knowledge of British celebrities idk) We made it about five minutes in before the consensus was “what the actual fuck are you showing us what is wrong with you???”
so nice of Nate to take a break from family leave to talk about uhhh violent sensationalized pedophilia! I enjoyed it
My hot take is that the episode Brass Eye *should* have been cancelled for is the one with Buzz Aldrin's mentally disabled astronaut sex slave. So grim. So unnecessary.
agreed, paedogeddon did nothing wrong (at least in comparison)
Fave podcast does my fave TV programme? Re-subbed, even though I’m skint. A birthday present from me to me, in spite of my jaded, listless sexual appetite of a 60-year-old colonel. If you get a chance to watch Brass Eye director Michael Cumming’s ‘Oxide Ghosts’; I highly recommend. I laughed so hard it gave me Czech neck.
I legit heard from an unrelated source about that show and episodes existence yesterday.
Also in the drugs episode, they claim that Cake is a "cranabolic amphetamoid"
The drugs episode has my favourite newsreader nonsense in the whole series: "Drug use among children has, for many an education, and with obvious alarm - to both parents - on the increase almost yearly"
Holy shit my mind is blown!
I have the DVD. It has the first series and describes Paedogeddon as the “2001 special” with no reference to further unaired episodes.
I was fairly sure this was the case too, I also have the DVD. If there were unaired episodes, I would have thought they’d have emerged somewhere by now, unless they were destroyed.
Thinking about American political “hoaxes” and the only one I’m coming up with is partial birth abortion. My dad still believes that one despite being a 2 time Bernie voting union guy.
Oh with To Catch A Predator what basically happened was that they (the show and the cops) bungled a sting with a county level assistant district attorney who killed himself, so advertisers started pulling, management was changing, and Hansen was caught having an affair with a (adult) coworker. After that Hansen was basically doing Kickstarter and convention scams. You can read much more here https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/zf5q52/reality_tv_the_rise_and_fall_of_to_catch_a/
Great ep. Chris Morris is a bona fide genius. Also, Panorama has been on tv since the 50s
Good episode, but they barely talked about Brass Eye at all :/ oh well stillfunny and maybe they'll do a Day Today episode sometime.
UK used to mean United Kingdom, but ask anyone today and they'll tell you it stands for Unbelievable Kon. (Wait, that's just an episode of Trash Future.)
I only learned about this from a lost media iceberg video two days ago. I guarantee South Park could have gotten away with this concept, even in 2001. Hell, maybe even the Onion or Cracked. But considering the British media environment before and definitely after 2001, there was no way this could fly.
Graham Linehan wrote a depiction of a trans woman specifically in The IT Crowd that was... like... 75% fine? and people reached out like "Graham, thank you for your positive portrayal of trans women, just a couple notes..." and he went *ballistic* I hadn't heard about his experiences with the Repeal the 8th stuff, but it does go to show how obsessed TERFs are with specifically AMAB genitalia, because if you recall, the "girls cutting their breasts off" narrative is pretty new, and it has basically been "men in dresses lurking in bathrooms" etc etc from the beginning, and that Graham had a moment about trans people getting abortions, clearly he just forgot trans men were a thing, because there's no dick to fixate on. Or so *he* thinks 😏. It's all very... Zardoz.
A correction for Nate. Juvenile cases are typically sealed upon turning 18.
the reaction to Paedogeddon is basically just what people think the reaction to the 1950s Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast was like
Truly stunned when I learned most people knew it was fake
I think the child actor was added digitally in the scene with the stocks?
I don't have a source for that either but I remember reading it
Very much enjoying nate slowly finding out that each person in this was actually not involved and they actually said this stuff for real
This was the one thing we did want to happen.
Oh shit, I’ve been waiting for this one for ages. Thanks lads!
It's one of those things where if Linehan had just listened to valid critisms about his writing and then actually went the extra mile to do better, he could have continued to enjoy the media prestige and respect he had. But no, doubling down & being a bigot was more important.
A rare britainology talking about a British thing that is good! What a treat
Sometimes we deserve a treat