Charlie Brooker

Black Mirror: All episodes ranked from worst to best

In the seven years since Black Mirror first aired, Charlie Brooker's dystopian vision has started to seem less and less implausible.

How much you enjoyed Philomena Cunk's history of Britain depends on how funny you find Diane Morgan's resting confused face. I find it hilarious. Her interviewees are kind of in on the joke but clearly briefed to take it as seriously as possible. They'll be mid-flow and she will cock her head and drain all the interest from her face. "What's the most political thing that's ever happened?" she asked Robert Peston, who did his best to answer with a straight face. Co-producer Charlie Brooker's fingerprints are everywhere in the way Morgan's vain, poorly informed, easily distracted Cunk operates within a ruthlessly satirical production, which sends up the tropes and clichés of every dodgy documentary and history programme. She might not be the comic creation we need, but she is the one we deserve right now.

Has Charlie Brooker ended 'Wipe' for good?

The co-creator of Netflix's hit anthology series was forced to cancel 2017 Wipe, but has not entirely given up on the show.

Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker's prophetic Channel 4 sitcom skewered east London hipster culture to a tee through its odious protagonist, a self-proclaimed "self-facilitating media node" and purveyor of witless viral videos via his website TrashBat.co.ck (registered in the Cook Islands).

But the show's true concern was the plight of depressed journalist Dan Ashcroft (Julian Barrett), surviving unhappily in the offices of Sugar Ape, too ill-motivated and sickened by the buffoons around him to better himself. His article "Rise of the Idiots", in which he takes his tormentors to task, only makes matters worse, proving a hit and seeing him hailed as "Preacher Man" by the same fools he sought to destroy.

His sister Claire (Claire Keelan), an aspiring and idealistic documentarian, is similarly thwarted by Barley and his kind.

Ashcroft's failed interview at The Sunday Times, where he humiliates himself by stating a preference for "Dutch wine", is excruciating and made worse by his having to return contrite to Hosegate to retract his resignation from Charlie Condou's withering editor, Jonathan Yeah? (the question mark added by deed poll), who gloats deliciously.

20 of the most absurdly funny quotes from Nathan Barley

It might have been an under-the-radar ratings flop when it aired on late night Channel 4 back in 2005, but Nathan Barley lives on in pop culture memory.

TV review, Cunk on Britain (BBC2)

A brilliant puncturing of television histories.

Frank Skinner returns to his den of disgruntlement for a new run of Orwellian humbuggery. Tonight's panel comprises Goggleboxer Scarlett Moffatt, Tardis tenant Pearl Mackie and Britain's grouch laureate Charlie Brooker. Life experiences being lined up on the conveyor belt of calamity tonight include foot-based faux pas Crocs, the awkwardness accompanying a haircut and the little cylinder of sadness accompanying every visit to a hotel since time immemorial: the UHT milk carton.

Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker on his 'goofy' persona

Charlie Brooker says people are surprised to meet him in real life - as he's not the "horrible deadpan sarcastic monster" they see on TV.