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Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe

Charlie Brooker
  • Posted at 12:25pm
  • 11 October 2007
  • by RhodriMarsden-RT
  • 3 comments

I know this is a bit "meta", so apologies in advance for writing a TV review of a TV review show presented by a TV reviewer.

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is currently showing on BBC4. Watching him administer corporal punishment to the stupidities and excesses of today's television can be a strange experience – mainly because the medium he is savaging has allowed him to do such a thing. It's a bit like your local Presbyterian church deciding that they're going to try having a short run of Satanic Saturdays.

Even the programme announcer had a slight note of disbelief in her voice as she introduced Tuesday's show. "And now," she said, "biting the hand that feeds him..." Because while it's relatively easy to pour scorn on cheaply made satellite TV (as I've found over the last six weeks), Brooker finds as much to criticise in terrestrial shows – not least those shown on the BBC – and he's certainly not afraid to do so.

Last week's show, for example, was turned upside down after he expressed considerable irritation at an edict from BBC bosses that advised what can and can't be done during the end credits of his show. While watching it, you couldn't help wondering if feathers were being ruffled. And if they were being ruffled, whether feather ruffling was just something that had to be put up with in order to get Brooker's wit on the BBC.

Whoever commissioned the show, of course, will have known what was coming. His website in the late 1990s, TVGoHome, was an often potty-mouthed pastiche of our dear Radio Times, featuring vivid descriptions of shows such as "Britain's Burliest Proctologists" or "Depressed Citizens Deliberately Dashing Their Own Brains Out against the Concrete Floors of Shopping Centres".

His Guardian column, Screen Burn, continues to colourfully point out the myriad reasons why Anthea Turner or Jamie Oliver can be loathsome TV presences, while saving the odd compliment for people like Richard Dawkins, or shows like BBC2's Heroes.

On Tuesday's programme he turned his attention to the subject of TV news, and he once again made us kick ourselves for unquestioningly lapping up all kinds of televisual nonsense without so much as a raised eyebrow.

He's right, the BBC News 24 studio does look like a gigantic futuristic holodeck and it is completely unnecessary. And yes, I do blithely accept reporters telling me that "details are still sketchy" or "there are conflicting reports" when what they actually mean is "I don't know".

Brooker is at his best when he's at his most barbaric, and particularly when he's shown unleashing barely controlled rants at his own television screen. Not because swearing is funny (although it always is, obviously), but because many of us hurl abuse at our TV when we're being patronised or embarrassed. Charlie shows that it's not just us, and that the TV producers have, in fact, got it wrong.

Indeed, it's hard to imagine any programme-maker watching Brooker's vicious analyses and wanting to carry on with their careers. Some of them might say that it's easy to criticise, and that critics have no idea how hard it is to make great TV. Well, Charlie Brooker has had a go. And he's making a pretty good fist of it.

Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe continues on Tuesday at 10:00pm on BBC4 (Sky 116, Virgin 107, Freeview 9).

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  • Posted on 16 October 2007
  • at 8:36am
  • by Vicwardian

I LOVE Charlie Brooker. I've only seen Screenwipe once but it was great. I wish his sitting room was a little lighter, though - I'd like to know a bit more about him and what kind of ornaments he favours.

And yes, it should be on BBC1 at 9pm. Good idea.

  • Posted on 12 October 2007
  • at 1:12pm
  • by sheridanski

"Hilltop Brasshead Bergerac" was the greatest TVGoHome entry - "Challenging new series in which John Nettles lurks inside a gigantic mechanical model of his own head made from brass and Victorian rivets, manipulating facial expressions via a bewildering system of cranks and pulleys in order to re-enact key scenes from old episodes of Bergerac, conversing when necessary with another mechanical head representing Charlie Hungerford situated on a neighbouring hill."

For this alone the man can do no wrong.

Good show this.

  • Posted on 11 October 2007
  • at 7:34pm
  • by Larry

Charlie Brooker should be shown on BBC 1 at 9pm, so everybody can see that not all television is mindless repetitive rubbish.

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