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Broken News - all the news you are ever going to need
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Co-creator, writer, director - John Morton Ìý
Talking about how the series came about
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I can't remember exactly when it happened - it was probably some time in the Eighties - but there was a moment when the Sunday papers exploded. Ìý
They'd always been big of course – some of them carrying up to two separate supplements, but suddenly they were huge. Too big to stuff through the letter box, too big to hook under your arm, and much too big to read.
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It was the Sunday Times that went first, followed by the rest of the Sundays, then lo and behold the Saturday papers exploded too, then the Fridays, and so on.
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Suddenly, there was far too much space for far too few ideas, and so the race was on to coin new ideas, or perhaps to force together two existing ideas at high temperature in the desperate hope that some third idea would somehow emerge: people who have second homes; people who have second children; result, a slew of articles about the new social phenomenon of those who have decided to have a house for each of their children.
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This was the starting point for The Sunday Format – a comedy series on Radio 4 which began in 1996 and which I hold the dubious honour of inventing, only to find that when it went past the first series that I didn't have time to write any of it.
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Luckily, there were other people who did have time write it, one of whom was Tony Roche, which is how nearly ten years later we found ourselves collaborating to produce Broken News.
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If The Sunday Format had any defining qualities, it was probably its structure, which was designed to mirror the way in which we consume the acres of newsprint which we're now forced to lug home from the newsagents every weekend and strew around our feet.
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If we read them at all, we read the first few sentences of some article which at first glance looks as if it might be interesting - Top Ten list of Motorway Service Stations, as chosen by this year's Booker Prize nominees - only to find that it is of course spurious, at which point we abandon it and move onto something else - a new take on this year's Booker Prize nominations, as reviewed by staff from motorway service stations - for the sentence and a half that it takes us to realise that this too is spurious, and so we go on through Sunday until Monday arrives and we have to stop.
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In the last few years, exactly the same thing has happened to television news, hence the birth of Broken News.
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There could never be enough news to fill all the hours on all the live rolling channels that are now devoted to it. With more and more of us now having satellite, Freeview, or cable, we consume this torrent of news in exactly the same way as we attack the overblown papers, except this time with channel changer in hand.
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We flip from channel to channel, moving on the moment we get bored, in the hopeless quest for something genuine, wading through an onslaught of nearly news – endless two-way speculation live by satellite about what might have happened, what might be about to happen, or about what might possibly be happening right now - although of course it's impossible to say what's happening for sure until whatever it is has finished happening.
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In Broken News we've taken the long way round in order to mirror this experience, employing no fewer than 145 actors; we've invented 25 news channels, all of which could exist but don't, and all reporting stories that haven't happened but might.
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The show begins and ends half way through a sentence and crashes back and forth at speed between items on Tomato Flu, a missing island, record sperm counts in Suffolk, the end of rain ("the gardener's friend"), stolen teeth, the Pope's message to the world's five billion Catholics to spend more time indoors, and so on.
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Add to this American news, sport, weather, business news, celebrity news, traffic news - Broken News really is all the news you're ever going to need.
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John Morton's other credits
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His first success came in 1994 when 91Èȱ¬ Radio accepted his pilot comedy script – People Like Us.
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Starring Chris Langham, the first series of People Like Us on Radio 4 won a Sony Award and a Writers' Guild Award for Best Radio Comedy, as well being nominated for a British Comedy Award.
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John also began to work, together with Chris Langham, as co-writer of the sitcom Kiss Me Kate, starring Caroline Quentin, which ran for three series on 91Èȱ¬ ONE.
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In 1995, he wrote Mightier Than the Sword, a comedy series for Radio 3 starring John Sessions and John Bird, and a second series of People Like Us, which was again nominated for a British Comedy Award, this time winning.
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The following year saw a third series of People Like Us on Radio 4, which won a second British Comedy Award.
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John also created and wrote the pilot of The Sunday Format, which went on to become a long-running series on Radio 4, winning a British Comedy Award in 1999, and a Sony Award in 2000.
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People Like Us transferred to television in 1999 with John writing and directing.
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The first series on 91Èȱ¬ TWO won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Comedy/Comedy Drama and the Silver Rose for Comedy at the Montreux Television Festival, as well as being nominated for a Bafta, a British Comedy Award and a South Bank Show Award.
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A second series followed in 2001.
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In 2002, John wrote and directed The Gist, a one-off special for the launch night of 91Èȱ¬'s new arts channel 91Èȱ¬ FOUR, and in 2003 he directed Absolute Power, a new six part comedy for 91Èȱ¬ TWO starring Stephen Fry and John Bird.
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In 2004 he was Script Editor on Help, a 91Èȱ¬ comedy series starring Paul Whitehouse and Chris Langham, and Script Consultant on the second series of Absolute Power.
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He also spent time in America developing an American version of People Like Us for Fox, the fate of which remains uncertain.
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In 2005 came Broken News - a six-part comedy series for 91Èȱ¬ TWO – which he co-created, wrote (with Tony Roche) and directed. Ìý
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