Charlie Brooker

Keith Allen: Charlie Brooker produces vacuous nonsense

Maverick actor Keith Allen has hit out at journalist and broadcaster Charlie Brooker in this week's Radio Times, branding the latter's work "vacuous nonsense".

More standups in the return of Charlie Brooker's So Wrong It's Right show on Thursday on Radio 4. This is a strange show. Brooker is a scurrilously witty man, but his humour, like David Mitchell's, lies in his anger. There is no anger in this programme. And although it purports to be about failure - asking its competitors to tell anecdotes about when they've made fools of themselves - it's actually about comedians shoe-horning little bits of their routines on to the radio. In the hope of getting more broadcasting work.

The first series of this panel game went out late at night, but series two has won a place in the post-news chuckle slot. The premise is simple: host Charlie Brooker invites three panellists to share their experiences of life's low points (Modern Life Is Putrid is one discussion point) or dream up worst-case scenarios in topics ranging from soaps to boy bands, and off they go. It's pure Brooker territory, of course, but he's a master at highlighting the comedy of the dark side, and it's done in a warm, mutually-inclusive, sharing way that's curiously uplifting. And funny. This episode features Rufus Hound, Holly Walsh and Mark Watson and it's a cracker. The only downside is that you won't be able to see Hound's magnificently voluminous trousers.

Charlie Brooker's an insightful and talented writer when it comes to dissecting television, although it sometimes feels like he hates things simply because it's easier to write disparaging remarks and poke fun at people's appearance. How many times do you remember him eulogizing a TV programme or celebrity? The answer: occasionally and very briefly. There's no comedy in loving something passionately -- but most people, especially Brits, love a good, articulate, vociferous moan.

Brooker's latest series, BBC2's How TV Ruined Your Life, took a pessimistic view of television (as the title suggests), which is a default perspective of Brooker's that can be wearying. He also recycled material from his BBC4 show Screenwipe and Channel 4 series You Have Been Watching, or at least made the same broad points, which is a shame for existing fans craving new opinions. Still, HTVRYL was as acerbic and intelligent as we've come to expect from Brooker (king of the withering, effusive putdown), with the only real downside being the inclusion of comedy sketches that either outstayed their welcome, or delivered a weak punchline that didn't justify the effort.

Ten O'Clock Live, Channel 4, week 6, preview

Six weeks in, the satirical news show presented by David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr, Charlie Brooker and Lauren Laverne is now halfway through its run and the team seem to have finally settled into their stride.

To describe Charlie Brooker as biting the hand that feeds him in How TV Ruined Your Life isn't quite right. What actually happened is that television saw him gnashing and snapping away in print like a rabid alsatian, and thought "That looks lively... I wonder if it would be fun to stick a hand in his mouth." And the answer is yes. This week, he was addressing the effect the "flickering fibbing machine" has on our attitudes to romantic love, with its nightly propaganda about soul mates, physical beauty and the proper conduct of a love affair.

Much of the energy came from satirising our illusions about love itself, rather than any telly-induced misconceptions about it. He made a decent case, for example, that chewing gum offers a good metaphor for the trajectory of the average infatuation: "After the initial burst of excitement you soon find yourself just going through the motions, while your interest drains away and then you end up just spitting it into a hankie." But he's also very good at the clichés of television presentation, neatly caught here in a TV news bulletin about the progress of an office romance, presented as if it were an unfolding political story, with an earnest pavement reporter telling the news anchor that "our sources indicate she intends to terminate their 18-month relationship". I'm not sure what Konnie Huq will make of his bleak view of love, but for anyone not married to him it was very entertaining.

Charlie Brooker's bracing cocktail of bile, wit and shocking clips is mixed to perfection tonight. His theme is the way the "flickering fibbing machine" in the corner peddles myths about love and romance. Whoever combs the archives to find his footage has played a blinder: it's almost impossible to believe the clips from a 1980s QED doc testing female sexual response with a big metal probe or a hideous reality show called Breaking Up with Shannon Doherty aren't fakes - almost, but not quite. Brooker slips into rant-o-matic occasionally, but he's angrily right on most counts, and the spoof boy-band song about settling, called Girl You'll Do, is priceless.

Just Been Dumped? Blame the TV

Charlie Brooker continues his deliciously satirical campaign against our most prized possession - the idiot box - in the fourth episode of How TV Ruined Your Life, with tonight's episode shining the spot light upon love.

Charlie Brooker's combination of real archive footage with well-crafted spoofs of the same is entertaining, if never quite delivering the killer punches that made his BBC4 shows Screenwipe and Newswipe unmissable. This week, he looks at how television has distorted love and romance.

10 O'Clock Live has seriously high levels of Laverne

I tune in to 10 O'Clock Live on a Friday in the hope of a few laughs at the hands of Charlie Brooker. But in tonight's episode this comprised only five minutes of the hour which was otherwise given over to cheap one-liners from Jimmy Carr and the always-grating Lauren Laverne waffling.