Charlie Brooker

Following in the footsteps of Screenwipe, Charlie Brooker's new show - you guessed it - aims its remote at the world of videogames. Whether you're a gamer hater or lover, Gameswipe - part of the Electric Revolution season on BBC4 - shows how games can be just as dumb or brilliant as TV and movies. And Charlie certainly knows what he's talking about, having spent his early career causing mayhem at PC Zone. Graham Linehan, Dara O'Briain and Dom Joly are on hand to join in the pixellated fun.

Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe

Tonight's an exciting night to be a fan of videogames as, at long last, Charlie Brooker will be giving the Screenwipe treatment to the oft-maligned (yet incredibly lucrative) form of electronic entertainment in Gameswipe.

Very slightly disappointing guests this week, although Lee Mack's team does manage to accommodate the widely differing talents of beaming West End musical star Michael Ball and sulphurous TV grump Charlie Brooker. Both are good value (Ball even makes a sly joke about drugs), but on David Mitchell's team Trinny Woodall and Reece Shearsmith seem, well, out of sorts. No matter. This show has no problem overcoming the handicap of less-than-sparkling guests to deliver a half-hour of laughs. Tonight the flights of fancy (or are they brute facts?) include Shearsmith's alleged spell working in a themed funeral parlour and Brooker's claim that he pretended to a girlfriend for six years that he was partially deaf. But crucially, do three members of the cabinet subscribe to David Mitchell's Twitter feed? And, if so, who are they? You'll have to watch to find out.

If Harry Hill's TV Burp gently pulls TV's leg, then Charlie Brooker's savage review show yanks limbs clean off, sticks what's left into a blender then posts the remains to programme makers as a warning.

The opposite of good clean family fun, Charlie Brooker's show is an animated version of his Guardian column in which he ruthlessly tears into telly. It helps, of course, that he is confined by neither taste nor decency. Hence his freedom to scoff at ITN's attempts to bury its embarrassing Jackson vs Diana funeral coverage, ending with a "fuck you ITN" and his description of Torchwood as "ChuckleVision with come shots". It's all classic Brooker, even if his comedian guests are often left as smirking onlookers unable to match the bile resulting from thousands of hours of TV viewing.

Charlie Brooker has a rival (um, sort of) to his You Have Been Watching - Steve Jones with his own celeb game show chewing over recent telly. The fact that his team captains are Fern Britton and Jason Manford, the cut-price Peter Kay, will give you an idea of the level this is pitched at.

Just hours after her 10-year run on This Morning comes to a tearful end today (we predict), Fern Britton is back on our screens as a team captain (together with Jason Manford) on a new TV trivia quiz hosted by Steve Jones.

Not quite as leftfield as Charlie Brooker's You Have Been Watching, on C4 - this is actually good fun with some cleverly inventive rounds in which the panellists show off their telly knowledge.

Bonus points tonight go to Laurence Llewellyn Bowen, for pointing out that their studio desk looks like a giant red toilet bowl. "We're like germs under the rim," he grumbles, accurately. And a prize to the wag responsible for providing us with a (possibly unintentional) shot of Steve Jones posed neatly between the nipples of a bare-chested James Corden.

The Tao of Screenwipe: Charlie Brooker's best bits

Brooker's perspective-altering look at the inner workings of TV showed us everything from the power of editing to the creepiness of low-budget religious programming.

TV Review: You Have Been Watching

Weirdly, I think we're seeing what Charlie Brooker is really like as a person. The scowling, self-loathing ranter stuck in his flat on Screenwipe is as much a creation as anything David Bowie ever came up with. Sure, it's based on something within him, but to assume that he's constantly followed around by rainclouds is pretty stupid.

I am a big fan of TV critic Charlie Brooker, both in print and on screen. As his BBC4 show Screenwipe proved, no one else spews vitriol with such wit, charm and amiability. C4 obviously thinks so too, and has given Brooker his own TV based quiz show, You Have Been Watching.

And Brooker doesn't disappoint. He's as sharp, insightful and snide as ever. The problem is with the format, which foists three guests upon him. As they are nowhere near as funny as the host, their presence first becomes a distraction, then an irritation.

Much the same can be said about the quiz aspect of the show, which is treated with such bored disdain by Brooker that it makes you wonder why they bothered with it at all.

Get rid of the guests, get rid of the quiz and you would have something worth watching. Namely, Screenwipe.

However You Have Been Watching did unearth some splendid clips of bizarre television around the world, the best of which was from a blood-drenched combat recreation show pitting history's warriors against each other - Zulu versus William Wallace, Apache versus Ninja, culminating in the IRA taking on the Taliban in a car park. For the record, the IRA won.