On a recent episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Will Ferrell was pressed to pick the favorite movie he had ever made. He didn’t spend a ton of time thinking about it and went with Anchorman. That’s a fair selection, as it’s one of the formative films of his career–the cast is super strong, the story is hilarious, and it has one of the greatest all-anchorman fight scenes in the history of cinema. We can’t think of a single other one at the moment, but that’s besides the point.
The point is that it’s a terrific few minutes of film, and a few of the U.K.’s top TV news teams decided it would be a good idea to parody it themselves (via The Daily Dot).
In the clip, the Channel 4 news team, while taking a shortcut, finds themselves face-to-face with the bike-riding ITV news team, who are looking for trouble. Then the crew from Sky News gets in on the action, and that’s when you know it’s going down. Of course, the classic newscaster brawl rule applies here: No touching of the hair or face. Before things get out of hand, though, Ed Miliband–the leader of England’s Labour Party from 2010 to 2015–swoops in and averts a crisis by turning it into a picnic.
Even if we Americans don’t get all the cultural and personality-based references, it’s still obvious that this is a well-made parody, and we’re sure the gag lands especially well with British audiences.
Check out the clip above, revisit the original Anchorman scene below, and let us know in the comments if you’ve seen any other Anchorman parodies of this caliber.
Featured image: Channel 4/YouTube
