Broken News - Series 1 - Complete [2007]

Customer Reviews:

BROKEN NEWS = HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.......2007-02-09

An excellent, succinct, funny, incisive, well-produced parody of all that is shallow, uninformative, transient and superficial in so much of the so-called news media (so often, non-news) of this country (GB), and, presumably, the USA.
If you ever despair at the tabloid-isation of the TV news reports - this is the DVD for you. Buy it, watch it at least twice (to catch all those little pieces you missed first-time round); by this time you should be hooked. Even the repetitive nature of some of the in-jokes all add to the enjoyment of this DVD. A word of warning; if watched too close to the "real" news, a deep cynicism might result - you might prefer BROKEN NEWS to the "real world" of mass-media presentation.

Bizarre but brilliant.......2006-10-24

Although it won't be to everyone's tastes, there is nothing quite like broken news. The sheer speed at which it switches between studios and the absolute randomness of some of the comments prove for many laugh out loud moments. Admittedly, many will not want to watch the shows again and again, but there is enough in them to notice extra things each time.

When it was on BBC2 I watched it every week - some episodes were undoubtedly better than others but they all had their moments. I'm sure most will find their favourite studio team and await their take on each issue, and also missing what some of the newsreaders are saying because of trying to read all the 'facts' buzzing around the rest of the screen.

Admittedly the format is repeated each time and the show is essentially quite repeptitive - but it is definitely worth a look if you think you can stand the pace.

Like comedy? Then move on; there's nothing to see here.......2006-09-21

Not a programme I want to spend a lot of time reviewing; just wanted to add some counter ballast to the utterly bewildering 5 star marks given by others here.

Personally, I find the show smug, flat, and (categorically and undeniably - check Wikipedia for a 'Day Today' comparison) derivative, but most importantly, I consider it to be cripplingly unfunny ... (something I was quite surprised by considering I quite liked ... not loved ... the writer/director's earlier series 'People Like Us')

I have seen people on other sites suggest that the reason others don't like it is that it is too subtle and that, as media studies students / industry professionals / the cognescenti, they are better placed to judge the show than anyone else. I can vouch for this being patronising twaddle (anyone who has ever seen rolling news will understand what is going on here), and considering how mirthless the whole enterprise is, am suspicious of any review which gives it the time of day, let alone a favourable write-up.

I watched the show (just one episode, I admit, but considering how much I disliked it, anything more than that would have been redundant) transfixed by how bad it actually was. Not bad in a 'My Hero' sort of way ('My Hero' at least knows what it is ... and is not so much of a laughter-centric black hole for that matter), but bad in a cold and clinical sort of way; like an experiment in anti-comedy.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the show and were thinking of purchasing or renting this, I would urge you to find some other way of viewing an episode before you put any money in the makers' pockets and judge its comedic worth for yourselves.

Broken News.......2006-06-20

This is a fantastic satirical view of 24hr rolling news channels.

Very funny and fast paced. I can't watch Sky News in the same way again.

I had it on and my mate thought it was a genuine news story on the TV (Bolivia Crisis)

BROKEN COMEDY.......2006-06-19

"Acutely Observed and Superbly Performed" states the cover blurb
of this DVD and I would whole heartedly agree, the style, detail and performances of this spoof 24 hour news channle hopping show is spot on and a credit to all the performers and technical crew who worked on this show.

Unfortunately the cover doesnt state "Expertly Written" and this is where the whole project falls down for me. What exactly were the writers trying to do with the comedy element of this show, or was it improvised maybe?

Getting the style and performance of the parody right is only one aspect and not enough to be funny in it's self, for very long.

Funny ideas and developement of funny ideas into new twists and more absurdity is needed to keep interest, to help the performers be funny and to amuse the audience for longer than the first minute.

This show comes up with supposedly funny news stories that cant happen which are of varying amusement but then goes nowhere with these ideas. It just repeats them from different style news presenters again and again intercutting the ideas. Relying on
it's channle hopping device to allow the show to move on keep cutting to new things. It's all concept and no real content.
It's repetative, annoying and boring.

I'll quite blatantly state I've only ever sat through about
2 episodes of this on TV, so If I missed the funny episode and
this reveiw offends you then please do point this out to me
what I missed.

Here are Five better news dvds that you can laugh at instead that you can buy from Amazon.co.uk

1. The Day Today
2. Not the Nine Oclock News
3. Drop the Dead Donkey (boxsets)
4. Have I got news for you - The best of the guests
5. 50 Years of BBC news with Michael Buerk

Yes undoubtably the real news has been funnier than this, at times!

Jonathan Young

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