Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker: A guide to the buzzwords of 2011

Been duped by a 'sock puppet'? Had a go at 'planking'? Living in a 'structured reality'? 2011 threw up some new words and concepts - and here they are explained.

Black Mirror - "The Entire History of You"

The final part of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror anthology comes instead from the mind of Jesse Armstrong, one half of the writing partnership behind comedies Peep Show and Fresh Meat. This marks a change of style for Armstrong, as there wasn't much to smile about in "The Entire History Of You" (well, beyond the one cereal joke).

Charlie Brooker's third 'Black Mirror' draws 870k

Charlie Brooker's third Black Mirror hit a ratings low, only picking up 870k viewers (including +1) for Channel 4 last night, overnight data suggests.

I'm trying very hard to admire Charlie Brooker's Channel 4 series Black Mirror. Because I ­gather it's against the luvvie law not to. But, Christ, if last week's snail-paced instalment was any slower it would have been a photograph. Schoolboy satire. With a sledgehammer. ­Sophisticated it ain't.

Surrealist bluffers guide to the British Comedy Awards

Will Ricky Gervais behave like a dick? Will anyone recognise Charlie Brooker as a comic? And will Miranda make anyone laugh, ever? Read on to find out...

The 12th best programme of 2011 according to the Radio Times.

The second and third of Charlie Brooker's techno-fables were provocative and strange; but the first, "The National Anthem", was extraordinary, the edgiest, most zeitgeisty TV fiction all year. Tackling the mob mentality of "the online hive-mind", Brooker imagined a prime minister challenged via YouTube to have broadcast sex with a pig, or see a kidnapped princess die. It wasn't just the warped premise that was so powerful, it was the way politicians were shown to be at the mercy of social media and comment boards. Beautifully played, it was deliciously black and thought-provoking. And very funny.

In this secular age for the great god TV with its flock now fragmented, Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror dared to show streets that had been deserted for the goggle-box. But if you missed his satire you'll probably never guess the must-see: the Prime Minister having sex with a pig, to comply with kidnap demands and save a princess. We didn't see the actual act - not even Channel 4 could show that - though we got to watch other people watching: in pubs, on hospital wards, home alone, and in the corridors of power. Lindsay Duncan, who once stalked the corridors televisually as Maggie Thatcher, played the PM's press secretary; Alex MacQueen and Justin Edwards, who once stalked them in The Thick of It as, respectively, the baldy blue-sky thinker and the blinky-eyed Newsnight nutter, were in there, too. This was Black Mirror's first problem: these familiar faces didn't serve as reassurance when dealing with such shocking subject matter, they simply reminded you of programmes which were funnier, better.

Its second problem was believability, or lack of. Not the belief that such a scenario could play out, pig and all, but the one that the cops could be so stupid as to accept without checking that the severed finger delivered to the news network did in fact belong to the princess (it was fat and obviously a man's). For a story to shoot off into such flights of fancy, it first needs to have covered a few of the basics.

The satire, though, was good. Brooker is a sharp observer of the world whizzing round him, and being spun in every sense - where a government thinks it can conceal in the time-honoured way only for a little lad with a smartphone already to know everything, forcing a No 10 aide to concede: "It's trending on Twitter." And where a female journalist desperate for a scoop will ping photos of herself in the style of Ashley Cole to a government underling who'll blow what's left of national security on the issue because he's desperate for a shag.

Not a complete failure, then, and I liked the PM''first response to the kidnapping ("What do they want? Money, release a jihadi, save the f***ing libraries?"). I also liked the idea that a jobbing porn actor might be roped in to play the premier (that this fellow would be on some "By appointment to..." file). But much as I wanted to see Michael Callow with his SamCam deadringer wife as our current leader, I couldn't. That's no reflection on Rory Kinnear who was his usual brilliant self. Whatever else he does in his career, he'll always be answering questions about this.

15 Million Merits but the script ain't one

Charlie Brooker and Konnie Huq get dark on the second installment of Black Mirror, but was she just there to fellate him while he banged this out?

Nauseous reaction to a joke-free satire

For my part, mild amusement turned first to distaste and then to nausea. No doubt Charlie Brooker would say this is precisely the reaction he was after..

As the ticker tape settles over in the ITV studios, a drama will begin on Channel 4 that is so closely modelled on The X Factor that there is no doubting that its scheduling directly after this year's grand final was a deliberate one.

Black Mirror's second episode, 15 Million Merits, is co-written by Charlie Brooker's wife Konnie Huq, who presented X Factor companion show The Xtra Factor in 2010.

Brooker abandoned his TV criticism column in The Guardian midway through his wife's stint on the ITV2 show, prompting many to speculate that he felt his partiality had been compromised by Huq's involvement in the franchise. The plot thickens.
Like The National Anthem, the first in the Black Mirror series, 15 Million Merits' plot is not its strongest point. But the fine performances from its stars - who include Julia Davis and Rupert Everett - more than make up for some weak links in the narrative.

And in terms of capturing the terrifying, oppressive nature of The X Factor, Brooker has it spot on with his barely fictitious show Hot Shot, which plucks ordinary folk from their dystopian drudgery and bombards them with stardom.

For X Factor fans, it will serve as the perfect way to reflect on what has been a more sinister and contrived series than any other.
It is dark and disturbing, but is it any darker and more disturbing than the real X Factor we know and love to hate?