Konnie Huq

Review: Antiviral Wipe

The quick-paced satirical special makes Brooker's return to our screens well worth the wait, says Lauren Morris.

More shrieking goonery with the good doctor Hill. Literally popping up and dropping in this week are former Blue Peter host Konnie Huq, Lewis star Kevin Whately, and Corrie's Georgia Taylor and Bill Roache (who at one point will do something ghastly to a cuddly toy). Plus, cameos from Joe Fagin and a former home secretary.

Konnie Huq talks about marrying Charlie Brooker

Ex-Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq admits she's a nerd - but doesn't know if she's legally married to Charlie Brooker.

Charlie Brooker becomes a father for the 2nd time

Television presenter Konnie Huq and her broadcaster husband Charlie Brooker have welcomed their second child into the world.

2012's been a great year for Charlie Brooker. His satirical anthology Black Mirror (which, by the way, is coming back early next year) and cop spoof A Touch of Cloth were massive hits, he was named 'Best Comedy Entertainment Personality' at the British Comedy Awards and he welcomed his first child with wife Konnie Huq.

Despite all that though, Charlie still has tons to moan about from the last 12 months in his annual Wipe programme - like the Olympic Games, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the US presidential election. Thankfully we won't have to wait another year for our next slice of Brooker grouching - a new weekly series will follow 2012 Wipe on BBC Two.

Charlie Brooker & Konnie Huq become parents

Charlie Brooker is celebrating after his wife Konnie Huq gave birth to a baby boy.
The couple welcomed little Covey at around 10pm last night at a London hospital.

Charlie Brooker neurotic over baby

Charlie Brooker has been stressing over his wife Konnie Huq's pregnancy.

A trio of Twilight Zone-style stories exploring the impact of new media and technology on our lives. Charlie Brooker's The National Anthem (an "unusual" blackmail threat for the prime minister), and 15 Million Merits (X Factor distraction culture pushed to extremes) - co-written with Konnie Huq - grabbed the headlines, but The Entire History Of You (by Peep Show's Jesse Armstrong) is worth catching too. What happens to relationships in a world where everything you see is recorded on a kind of Sky+ in your head?

15 Million Merits but the script ain't one

Charlie Brooker and Konnie Huq get dark on the second installment of Black Mirror, but was she just there to fellate him while he banged this out?

Just as The X Factor departs our screens, Channel 4 dances on its grave with this poison-pen satire. Written by Charlie Brooker and Konnie Huq (his wife of 16 months), it imagines a depressing future where our hero Bing (Daniel Kaluuya) is one of millions who ride exercise bikes in gyms all day while watching an X Factor-ish talent show called Hot Shot.

It's a resoundingly bleak world they've created: people live in cells with walls of interactive video screens playing ads you must pay to avoid; everyone eats from vending machines; and everyone wears grey tracksuits, unless they commit the crime of getting fat, in which case they wear yellow smocks and appear on a brutal game show called Botherguts.

Bing's dreary existence is lightened when he meets beautiful Abi (Jessica Brown Findlay from Downton Abbey) and sees a way out of the drudgery for her, via a place on Hot Shot. The story evolves (very slowly, mind you) as a haunting allegory about the way TV exploits and humiliates us, and the production design is superbly grim. Shame the targets feel big and easy.