Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe (BBC Four)

Series Four of The Guardian critics’ Love-hate Relationship with TV

Nov 19, 2008

Following on from his rather brilliant zombie horror Dead Set on Channel 4, Charlie plods on with a new series of his frank but often hilarious in-vision TV critic column

A few years ago Big Brother created a very strange concept that involved a bunch of people sitting in a room (the viewers) watching a bunch of people sitting in a room (housemates on a task) watching a bunch of people sitting in a room (the other housemates).

It all sounds a bit confusing but by writing an article about Screenwipe things start falling into the same territory; how does anyone review and critique a TV show that reviews and critiques TV shows? The answer, very easily as it happens. Unless someone comes along and criticises this criticism and it all starts getting too philosophical, but let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

The TV Version of the Guardian Screenburn Column

For those of you who have never seen Screenwipe (and honestly, where have you been?) it involves Charlie Brooker talking about and, more likely, tearing into some of the week’s television through the use of clips or him simply shouting at the camera.

Much like his Screenburn column, which a lot of the material is borrowed from, he chooses really obvious targets for ridicule such as reality TV and tacky gameshows but it’s all done with large amounts of fun.

Ross/Brand Rage and oh, by the way, people are dying in Africa

The first target? What else but the UK media’s utterly ridiculous obsession with the Ross/Brand phone call scandal, a further indication if anything that the scaremongerers who say TV is “dumbing down” might have a point. This was highlighted by a very choice clip from Channel 4 News, which is supposed to be the most high brow of news programmes, ending their coverage on the debacle with an almost “oh, by the way, people are dying in Africa” sentiment.

His following sweary rant about newspapers and the hypocritical nature in which they attack people on TV for being unethical was hilarious and frankly true. And he hits on a very real point that yes there is lame shock humour but it’s all part of freedom of speech. If comedy loses its edginess all sitcoms will turn out like Last of the Summer Wine, and no-one wants that.

We also had an entertaining dissection of Britannia High, a terribly misjudged take on High School Musical and further evidence that ITV can’t come up with a single original idea, and Paul Ross’s Big Black Book of Horror, a notion that is actually more terrifying than any of the contents.

As ever, Brooker spouts his wonderfully poetic condemnation of all things awful but it’s hard not to notice that he’s starting to go a bit grey at the temples. Perhaps he needs to calm down a bit?

But the reason why he gets so worked up and venting so often is that ultimately he’s someone who has a love for the medium. If you want proof, track down videos of him talking about Deadwood or The Wire (which he rightly identifies as the best show of the last 20 years) and you’ll see a man talking with passion about a subject he enjoys, without being pretentious.

His review work is simple and down to earth but very funny and hard to disagree with. He doesn’t sit there like the blabbering boffins on Newsnight Review who just hate everything and seem to spend more time showing off their enormous vocabularies and talking about how many levels things work on. Or something.

Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe airs on BBC Four at 10.30pm every Tuesday. The first episode can be downloaded on BBC iPlayer.

The copyright of the article Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe (BBC Four) in British TV is owned by Steven Cookson. Permission to republish Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe (BBC Four) in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.