The show consists of 4 Elves: James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptasynski, and Dan Schrieber. For those not in the know, they are four of the genius researchers who provide all the background material that Stephen Fry and his comedian pals juggle with on QI (a show you should be watching in its entirety, if you haven't already). As a result, they are skilled at delving into unlikely tangents and asking questions that turn the dullest news story into the most interesting thing you've ever heard. In every episode, global headline news and local council matters are given equal weight and what is often astonishing is how Mongolian postcodes can prove to have far more interesting global implications than Euro 2016.
The four panelists are charismatic and intelligent people, who clearly are as comfortable discussing global politics and economic theory as they are with making extremely bad puns and satirizing every single piece of news they lay their hands on. Anna Ptasynski is particularly adept at making her fellow panelists dissolve into tears of laughter, while Dan Schrieber is a deft host, leading them through various news stories and Twitter comments and ensuring they extract enough interesting information from every news item before they move on to more bizarre brilliance.
The most important fact about No Such Thing as the News is that it is freely available on YouTube for your global viewing pleasure. This show has extremely low production values (with one Twitter user declaring that "it looks like a hostage video"), and the only way they can convince the BBC to let them keep making more is to rack up the viewing numbers on those videos. I would watch every Sunday at the gym and nearly fall off my treadmill laughing. So while I exhort you to watch this show immediately and bump up their viewing figures so they can create many more seasons, I am definitely worried that I am going to injure myself when Season 2 is released. Oh well, it'll be worth it.
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