Doug Stanhope

A new season of the Wipe is always welcome. Each week, Brooker casts his customarily jaundiced eye across the worlds of the media, politics and the internet, as well as developments in TV, cinema, computer games and social media. Part of his success is that he doesn't hog the show but gets in good wingmen. Tonight's opener features contributions by comedians Jake Yapp and Brian Limond of Limmy's Show, as well as regular guest and American cultural correspondent Doug Stanhope.

Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker turns his satirical eye on the week's media output for a second series of swipes at whatever tickles his darkly comic fancy across all manner of technological platforms.

Indulging his passion for the spoken word, Brooker twists his tongue around anything and everything that gets his goat. With contributions from Brooker's regular US-watcher, comedian Doug Stanhope, and guests including jokers Jake Yapp and Brian 'Limmy' Limond.

Canadian comic Bobby Mair readies himself for Fringe

When you learn that Bobby Mair has been a support act for Jerry Sadowitz and Doug Stanhope, you get a fair sense of the dark terrain which this young Canadian's material might cross.

Writer and broadcaster Charlie Brooker casts his wry eye over seven days of swipe-worthy offerings on all manner of screen-based technology. From big-screen movies to internet-based entertainment picked up on small-screen devices, no transmission is safe from Brooker's lashing tongue and all-seeing eye. Contributing to the gleeful diatribes each week will be a selection of special guests, plus regular interjections from US joker Doug Stanhope.

Channel 4's ill-fated 10 O'Clock Live was an experiment worth conducting, but ultimately suffered from uncertainty over tone, material and personnel. Charlie Brooker's contributions, however, seldom let the side down, drawn as they frequently were in both style and content from his occasional Screenwipe series on BBC Four.

This six-parter incorporates a bit of both, blending archive hilarity with current affairs, TV with computer games and short films with studio interviews. Fear not, however: the latter seem more likely to involve the likes of Doug Stanhope and Barry Shitpeas than Amy Childs or Jamie Cullen. With the second series imminent of his excellent mini-series of futureshock dramas, Black Mirror, the only danger for Brooker and his relentlessly mordant wit may be overexposure.

Hopefully he wipes more than weekly, but that's most certainly a side issue. Mr Charlton Brooker returns to BBC2 with a lateral, big-faced look at the week's goings-on in politics, the media, the internet, TV, cinema, computer games, social media ... everything, really. He'll be joined, as ever, by guests and contributors, including US standup and sweary boozeman Doug Stanhope. Sure beats Mock The Week.

Everything is funny in her Kristine Levine's hands

Kristine Levine has turned some serious hardships in her life into comedy gold, from childhood abuse to a suicide bid by a straying husband - but it's all genuinely funny in her hands, says fellow comic Doug Stanhope.

Portrait of the artist: Doug Stanhope, comedian

'Which other artists do I admire? The ones that quit at the top of their game'

The Black Mirror scribe looks back in disgust at a year in the worlds of news, TV and, as a special bonus for BBC4 viewers, video games. Brooker's eternal concern that most of his fellow broadcasters are hysterical, reductive prudes won't be short of grist, as he considers coverage of the August riots, the economic apocalypse and Pippa Middleton's regal glutes. Contributing are furious comic Doug Stanhope and conceptual documentarist Adam Curtis.

As Brooker has observed in these pages, 2011 has been a grimly bumper cornucopia of events, what with Royal Weddings, the phonehacking enquiry and riots, to say nothing of Pippa Middleton's backside looming unseemly like a double moon over the media landscape. With the assistance of Doug Stanhope, Adam Curtis and Brian Limond, Brooker will be glancing back beneath arched eyebrow over the events, factual and fictional of 2011, dousing its overheated manias, controversies and moral panics with a cool and justly savage wit.