Love him or loathe him, there is no denying that over the last decade the work of Chris Morris has made a huge impact on British television comedy.  Boundaries have been firmly pushed by his work, from the surreally disturbing you-know-you-shouldn't-be-laughing-but-you-can't-help-yourself "Jam" to the often controversial "Brass Eye".

So, with rumours abounding of Morris' return to Channel 4 later this year , what better time to look back and remember the programme that thrust him into the TV comedy limelight?

For those of you with beneath-rock living arrangements "The Day Today" was a satirical parody of news and current affairs programmes.  To simply label it a "spoof" would be to do it a great injustice.  While a spoof will generally go for easy laughs by doing stupid irrelevant things, Morris, along with uber-comedy-producer Armando Iannucci, brought a new level of intelligence to the table.

With some keen observation and calculated exageration they brilliantly highlighted the self-importance and pomposity of the real TV news to create a caricature that could almost fool the less attentive viewer, for a few moments at least, into believing that these really were the headlines of the day.

Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front, Doon Mackichan, Patrick Marber, David Schneider and others, often playing multiple roles, formed an infalably excellent supporting cast and while not the "brains" behind the show their contributions were no less important.  If nothing else David Schneider's "News Dance" (check out the Mini-News menu on disk two) is enough to cheer anyone up!

So with a show this good, has the DVD been worth the wait?  I would say yes.  With a series like this, just the presence of the series itself is enough to warrant purchase.  For "The Day Today" we get a two disk set, well presented in a double "digipak" and slipcase.  The design has obviously been given a lot of thought and perfectly complements the style of the show.

This attention to detail continues on to the disks themselves.  Lavishly designed animated menus, drawing on the over-the-top opening titles and computer graphics of the series, guide you around.  Disk 1 contains the episodes themselves while on disk 2 you'll find the bulk of the obligatory special features.

Included are the original pilot, where everything looks a lot cheaper and every-so-often the screen tells us to do something like "Insert expensive looking title sequence here", along with all the "Mini-News" trailers shown the day before the full episodes aired, a number of deleted and extended scenes, including full length versions of two of the documentaries featured in the series, plus a "Po-faced Analysis" documentary which was produced by the Open University and compares the Day Today with the way genuine new TV news makers are trained.

The latter, while mildly interesting, may well leave you disappointed that there was too much of the BBC News trainees and not enough of "The Day Today", but it does give some insight into how the team pushed the format that little bit too far to gain the desired effect.

While I stand by my previous assertion that the series alone is worth the asking price, one can't help feeling just a little bit underwhelmed by the extras.  Some months ago Iannucci hinted that we might be seeing in-character episode commentaries, but this doesn't appear to have happened and while we are treated to a few hidden features (some fairly amusing newly recorded Chris Morris - Alan Partridge conversations, a Steve Coogan radio interview from 1994 and a "Cast Reunion" feature) it would have been nice to have seen a new documentary looking back at the making of the series and talking to the cast and production crew.

But what the hell, you'd probably only watch it once wouldn't you?