Charlie Brooker

The Guardian's Charlie Brooker makes a leap from BBC4 to Channel 4 and midweek primetime for a new show. Rather than watching him shouting at a camera in his front room, here he's joined in the studio by as-yet-unannounced guests to host a new comedy quiz about the week's telly highlights and, much more likely, its cavernous lowlights. We will be watching.

Charlie Brooker Time Out Interview

Charlie Brooker, Guardian TV columnist and increasingly recognisable telly face in his own right, is taking another satirical swipe at small-screen cliches. This time he's using the medium of a panel show, as host of Channel 4's You Have Been Watching. He walks us through his latest TV hell...

A comedy panel show about TV? I'm there. Even if it's It's Only TV But I Like It. This show's likely to be head and shoulders above that, devised and hosted as it is by Charlie Brooker, creator of BBC4's Screenwipe and Newswipe. If it softens Brooker's renowned cynical edge, it'll be a disappointment, but chances are this will be the funniest thing on TV all week.

Interview: Charlie Brooker Goes Electric

Charlie Brooker is about to go mainstream. With a bespoke theme tune, celebrity guests and an ear-piece, he's about to host an entertainment show in front of a live audience. Quite possibly, in tears. You Have Been Watching sees Mr Brooker doing the most commercial thing he's ever done... but surely it isn't that big a risk?

TV Review: News Wipe with Charlie Brooker

There's generally three responses I have to Newswipe with Charlie Brooker. One is admiration at a piece of witty insight. Two is a belly laugh at a funny. Third, and possibly most important is a mixture of outrage and disbelief.

Spoons, a sketch show about relationships co-created by Charlie Brooker, was given the heave-ho after one series by Channel 4, despite positive clippings stretching all the way to America, where the New York Times praised its "tight thematic focus" which "captured the moments - awkward, destructive and banal - of young dating and married life".

Poor ratings were cited. Spoons scooped up around 1.7m viewers at 10pm on Friday nights, which was indeed a big drop from that slot's summer average of three million. Problem was, the fact that the slot had been bookended by Big Brother was totally ignored. With an inflated opinion of the worth of their own slot, the Channel 4 bean counters consigned Spoons to the scrapheap. And of course now that slot struggles to draw more than a million. It's almost enough to make you wish they'd made a decision by actually watching the programme.

TV Review: Newswipe with Charlie Brooker

We're three episodes into Newswipe with Charlie Brooker and, if we're waiting for it to hit stride, like Mr Brooker suggested, then I'm going to have to prepare myself. You see, Newswipe is fast becoming Another Charlie Brooker Classic!

Charlie Brooker is really becoming something of a star. Just think, once upon a time, no-one had a clue what he looked like. He was just this voice... a voice of dissent accompanied by a depressed looking cartoon blob. After years hidden away from our eyes, now we've got loads of him.

Of course, mostly, we're used to seeing (and reading) Brooker taking TV to task, poking fun and offering comment. However, now he's in a new territory, looking at the world of news. Last week was the first offering, which worked very well indeed. As a show, it has started exceedingly well and, while we wait for it to really get into its stride, we can only assume it'll be getting better.

Last week Charlie Brooker's characteristically brilliant Newswipe started, taking a pin to the over-inflated lilo of news journalism. He's the only man who can make quantitative easing funny and has the gift of seeming, even after several hugely popular series, like a normal person who has invaded a studio.

News waffle was the enemy on Charlie Brooker's Newswipe - the new show from the newspaper critic. Newswipe began on an odd note - tortuously spending five minutes explaining what it was, when anyone who'd seen it in the listings had simply thought: "Oh, Newswipe. That will be like Brooker's previous series - Screenwipe - but about current affairs, instead of telly." Also - and perhaps inevitably - Newswipe had the faint, cordite smell of The Day Today clinging to its hair. For half an hour it was a show that basically wanted to say, in the words of Chris Morris: "These are the headlines. I wish to God they weren't."

Still, Brooker's schtick - an intelligent, liberal man brought to the brink of despair simply by looking at the BBC's homepage - is as welcome dissecting the German high-school shootings as it is Holby; and having an ROFL Newsnight is something to cling to in the schedules.