Charlie Brooker

Producers and directors, weep and despair! Bilious but brutally funny critic Charlie Brooker is back for another series of satirical swipes at the television industry. First up in his cross-hairs, expensive but bland television dramas, property shows and the furore surrounding Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.

In a recent newspaper column, Charlie Brooker hinted at a Damascene conversion to compassion as he argued against looking down 'on the genuine misery of those you consider beneath you' - something of a speciality for the Brooker of old. So, as BBC Four schedules six more parts of the critic's telly-bashing series Screenwipe (TV Burp for Chris Morris fans), can we expect it to be fronted by the pop-eyed, acerbic, ranting celebricidal Brooker, or a new touchy-feely incarnation? Thankfully, it looks like being the former, as tonight he explores what effect 'Manuelgate' could have on BBC programming, and sticks the boot into the plethora of job-based shows clogging the channels.

Screenwipe is BBC4's bilious, X-rated alternative to Harry Hill's TV Burp, a digest of current television via one man's warped sensibility. Brooker returns to our screens with his reputation bolstered by Dead Set, the satirical zombie shocker he recently penned for E4. Now, though, the gamekeeper can return to poaching.

It's been far too long, but finally Brooker, the master of dissecting current trends in television, returns for a new series. Expect the Ross/Brand saga, the economic meltdown, and costume dramas to come under Brooker's acerbic gaze.

Radio Times Blog Review

Watching Brooker administer corporal punishment to the stupidities and excesses of today's television can be a strange experience - mainly because the medium he is savaging has allowed him to do such a thing.

Review of Screenwipe Special

This disassembling of TV land made for fascinating AND hilarious viewing. How often do I get to write that? It showed us all just how much money goes into a TV show... from a 3 hour shoot for a 3 second segment of Brooker falling off a log, to seeing how creative an edit can really be.

Screenwipe USA Review

Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe started out with a short pilot run earlier in the year, which was watchable but somewhat confused. Thankfully, between that and the more recent five-week series, many of the earlier problems have clearly been addressed and largely ironed out.

Blog Review

Ah, Charlie Brooker. Anyone with any sense and love of TV reads his Guardian Screen Burn column every Saturday. It's usually the funniest thing you'll read that week. However, his Screen Wipe review show, which pretty much translates Screen Burn into pictures, hasn't been so compelling.

Off The Telly Review

Brooker, self-confessed rubbish presenter, seems to have the attention span of a gnat. Given a full half-hour to really get going on ridiculous text-message competitions designed to grab the viewer's money, the lamentable nature of daytime TV and the dozen or so other topics he selected just for the first episode, he still produces more or less the same few hundred words he'd use in Screen Burn.

'A semi-improvised sitcom set in the back rooms of Westminster' might sound like the driest, most clever-clever, Bremner-ish bit of business imaginable, but that's precisely what this isn't: it's laugh-out-loud funny - so good, in fact, I watched the second episode on video immediately after finishing the first, then phoned up the BBC to badger them for the third.