Charlie Brooker

TV review: How TV Ruined Your Life

It's not TV that ruined my life, Charlie Brooker, it's you. This - the ridiculing of ridiculous television - is not new ground for him. It's what he's very, very good at.

The first episode of Charlie Brooker's series How TV Ruined Your Life advanced the proposition that television's preoccupation with disaster and death ("shouting boo in your mind," as he put it) had left us full of delusional fears about the world at large. It was something of a shotgun assault on the medium, ranging from doomy news priorities to public information films, and cutting from real archive clips to pastiches that were good enough to make you do a double-take. But it was very often funny too, particularly when reminding you of 999's appetite for the wilder fringes of human mishap. "Have you ever thought what it would be like to be stuck in the path of a runaway digger?" asked Michael Buerk gravely, with the implicit suggestion that if you hadn't you'd been living in a state of foolish denial about the looming threat of rogue excavators. There was also an excellent parody of a Horizon-style doomwatch programme - "If Pens Got Hot" - which used a global outbreak of ballpoint combustion to mock the Chicken Little aesthetics of such formats.

How TV Ruined Your Life review

It may be familiar but it's also reassuring. We're talking pretty safe ground here, recognisable in tone and subject to anyone au fait with his previous output. It's Charlie Brooker being Charlie Brooker. And that's just how we want it.

Charlie Brooker turns up his drollery-o-meter to 11 as he presents a history of some of TV's most jolting attempts to lull us into a false sense of insecurity, from early public information films warning against flying kites into pylons, through to dramas like Threads in the 1980s, a graphic depiction of nuclear annihilation, in which Britain is reduced to "a Plymouth-style wasteland". Between clips and sketches, Brooker's argument is that overexposure to such TV causes us to overestimate the amount of risk we actually face in everyday life.

Ruined? That can't be right, can it? Surely TV lights up, redeems and enriches our lives? Not according to shouty wit Charlie Brooker, whose Screenwipe and Newswipe series on BBC4 routinely lambast every other programme in the schedules. His elaborate rants are here sorted into themes, starting with "Fear", a look at the many ways dramas and news bulletins make the world seem more perilous than it is. He starts with the easy target of public information films ("Polish a floor and set a rug on it - you might as well set a man trap!") and moves on to wonderful clips of grisly old QED docs. It's enjoyably edgy, but next week's edition (on "Love") is much, much better.

Video - Charlie Brooker: New show is 'me being stupid'

Satirist Charlie Brooker has told BBC Breakfast his new series, How TV Ruined Your Life, is largely just him "being stupid".

The TV critic was speaking ahead of the first episode, which examines how television can induce fear and features a spoof documentary entitled When Pens Get Hot.

How TV Ruined Your Life begins at 2200GMT on BBC Two on Tuesday in England and Wales and on Wednesday in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

10 O'Clock Live is That Was The Week That Was for now, and good fun because of that show's formidable heritage, as the four presenters are all competing to avoid being cast as the new Lance Percival, he of the laugh-free "topical calypsos".

David Mitchell and Jimmy Carr are jockeying for the David Frost role; Lauren Laverne is Millicent Martin, the not-so-dumb blonde. Mitchell didn't quite know whether to ask proper questions or go for gags during a discussion on bankers' bonuses, but he fared much better when interviewing the universities minister, probably because he's passionate about education.

Best joke? That would be Charlie Brooker on the unrest in Tunisia. He described the incident where a young vegetable seller set himself on fire as "an act of tomartyrdom".

In this new series, scabrous journalist Charlie Brooker blasts television's sensationalised vision of reality. Brooker tackles a different theme each week, kicking things off by examining how TV has used fear to keep viewers in check. It's a surreal mix of archive footage, sketches and interviews, with Brooker's savage commentary delivered at such speed it's difficult to keep up. Still, his wit cuts through, particularly when tearing into the BBC's Threads, a suitably grim Eightees drama about nuclear war.

One week in, there has so far been a mixed reception for 10 O'Clock Live, Channel 4's new satirical current affairs programme. Too slow, say some, lacking "bite", say others. Our principal complaint is this: as the show's only female host, can't Lauren Laverne be given more to do? She's whip-smart, funny, and she's the most experienced live broadcaster among them, yet she has been largely confined to providing the links between Jimmy Carr, Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell's set "comedy" pieces. Come on Channel 4, she's better than that.

There was a debate about banking in 10 O'Clock Live, C4's new satire show which, as the title suggests, goes out live. David Mitchell noted that anger at the banks has gone "way beyond the irritation at the pens on strings". It was the best line in what turned out to be a non-event discussion, and one of the highlights of what felt very much like a trial-run hour.

Both Mitchell and Jimmy Carr, who coined the imperishable double-entendre "Johnson out, Balls in" to mark the shadow cabinet reshuffle, enjoyed successful first nights. That's chiefly because they had the strongest monologues and, as it stands, 10 O'Clock Live is over-leveraged on contractualised diatribe obligations.

Charlie Brooker's rant on the egregious Sarah Palin was a frenzied rush at a door that had been kicked off its hinges a long time ago, and all he managed to hit was a brick wall. Whereas the fourth member, Lauren Laverne, had to make do with a lame skit on another mouldy target, American news anchors, and came across as a rather fey Tina Fey. Even the more up-to-date material, such as the revolt in Tunisia, suffered from over-exposure, not least in the show itself, where it featured in two almost identical riffs on tourism.

Although you only launch once, these are very early days. The comedic chemistry and sense of live urgency will take a while to develop. It was not helped by the blank spaciousness of the set, which leaves the participants looking removed not just from the audience but external events. The show's key asset, though, is four talented performers. Last Thursday they each looked as if they desperately didn't want to be the one that failed. Either they make more overt use of that competition or increase the opportunities for collaboration. More dialogue, in other words, and less monologue.