Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker gets a new show... I'm confused

Charlie Brooker is to write and present a new Channel 4 series in which he and a guest will dissect the week's television output. It will be called You Have Been Watching, and I'm praying that it's nothing like TV Heaven, Telly Hell.

On a good day, Charlie Brooker can make Brian Clough look like Kofi Annan. He's a kind of genius of spleen and when it's directed at the right target it can be deeply gratifying to watch him in action. But Newswipe with Charlie Brooker doesn't work quite as well as Screenwipe, the television-based series from which it has been spun off.

What Brooker promises is a "fun, snarky, weekly digest" to help less committed viewers keep up with "the world's most complicated soap opera" - the news. And when he concentrates on style it can be both funny and telling. To have the visual metaphors used to tart up news reports on "quantitive easing" dipped in acid until only the witless desperation of the endeavour was left was not only entertaining but salutary. There was also a striking contribution from Nick Davies, on how PR companies can effectively manipulate the news agenda. But elsewhere it occasionally strikes you as a one-man Have I Got News for You, and the contributions from people who aren't Charlie Brooker fall sadly short of the cutting precision of the man whose name is in the title.

TV Review: Newswipe with Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker is becoming something of a proper TV star now. He's definitely on the ascendency, not that he'd ever let on. Just look at how Newswipe became Newswipe with Charlie Brooker. You don't get your name tacked on the end unless you're making a stir.

If you saw the sublime news parodies The Day Today and Brass Eye in the 1990s, their spot-on observations of mangled English and media sensationalism of trivial stories made the news far funnier than it ought to be. Similarly, in this new series, cynical TV critic Charlie Brooker takes a pithy look at how the news is reported.

Ever wondered why we don't have a British Daily Show? Our own Jon Stewart to take on the media and Jon Snow's ties? Well that's roughly the idea behind Charlie Brooker's new show - Newswipe. A spin-off of his Screenwipe series, it aims to provide "a fun snarky weekly digest that will help keep you and hopefully me on top of the news soap opera".

As eagle-eyed readers will have spotted, it's weekly - and therefore unlikely to reach the "alternative news" status The Daily Show holds. It also lacks the US show's fast turnaround - in the opening episode we get gags about the Fritzl case, the Pope, and the school shootings in Germany - but nothing about the coverage of Jade Goody.

It's good, funny in patches, and worth watching. Too often, perhaps, Brooker points out the obvious (guess what? The media focuses on bad news!), but it's at its best when cutting between quotes to highlight media hypocrisy (something The Daily Show is particularly expert at).

A bit more of that, and a bit less directionless Brooker bellowing, and we might have a contender.

Charlie Brooker Newswipe Interview

Interviewing Charlie Brooker could be a daunting task but if you peer through the acerbic slights in Brooker's work, I always got the impression he was a really nice bloke... an approachable chap... the kind I'd get on with just fine.

Breaking news broke my mind

NEWSFLASH! Charlie Brooker's new TV show aims to take a Daily Show-style swipe at the bottomless chasm of 24-hour news. Here, he files from the abyss of 'Current Affairs Land'.

"You shouldn't criticise," says the archetypal mother figure, "If you can't do better yourself." It's a truism that boggle-eyed curmudgeon Charlie Brooker has dedicated his life to proving. The Guardianista set love his brand of anaemic satire because it never challenges their worldview; it simply articulates their own opinions in a stream of Chris Morris Lite vituperative logorrhoea. But even they have to question his poacher-turned-gamekeeper urge to make television programmes, particularly when it results in tat like Nathan Barley or Dead Set, a Swiftian satire dedicated to the coruscating proposition that Big Brother isn't very good. Screenwipe is Brooker's chance to show us what he thinks quality programming should be. So what do we get? Estuary-accented invective deliveredveryfastindeed, as if gabbling makes it somehow more trenchant, and grainy footage of Charlie sitting on his sofa shouting bleeped profanities at his television. If he were a student making videos for a media-studies course, his cheap ire might be acceptable. But this is national television, and Charlie Brooker is 37 years old.

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe took time off from spewing cheery vitriol across the television schedules to interview writers about the craft of writing.

These were clearly writers that Brooker admired, so his interview technique was disconcertingly sympathetic. The end result was a masterclass from such luminaries as Russell T Davies, Paul Abbott, Tony Jordan and Graham Linehan. All of whom spoke wittily and winningly about the combination of prevarication, panic and perspiration that produces a television script.

Ironically, the most pertinent point of a fascinating 50 minutes was made by a writer who wasn't even present. Abbott quoted Jimmy McGovern on the ever prickly problem of presenting exposition in dialogue: 'I would rather be confused for ten minutes than bored for five seconds.'

Charlie. Brooker. Dance. Routine. Four words that I never thought I would type together. However, anyone who tuned in for the return of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe last night would have got exactly that. Of course, this being Brooker, it was never going to be an ironic fanfared return, but rather, clever and crass all at the same time, with the arresting image of Brooker awkwardly grooving and wiping his strap-on arse... and that wasn't the half of it.