Charlie Brooker's Year Wipe

If new years didn't exist, I would want to invent them just for the joy of seeing Brooker take the piss out of the preceding 12 months. He was on top acerbic form last week, describing Ed Miliband as a "human balloon animal" and saying that Isis "make al-Qaida look like Crowded House".

He also tried to explain the whole David-Cameron-cock-in-a-pig's-head allegation (never thought I'd write that sentence, but really enjoyed doing so) with reference to Brooker's own scripted comedy Black Mirror, which first aired in 2011 and opened with an episode in which a fictional prime minister must have sexual intercourse with a pig live on national television.

"To be honest, the whole thing left me, particularly, feeling a bit weirded out," Brooker said, before pointing out that the Cameron story had come from one single, uncorroborated source and might not be true, even if everyone wanted it to be.

Brooker was ably assisted by the incredible Philomena Cunk, who was on hand to offer her insights into topical issues such as "femininism" and the refugee crisis. In fact, the human tragedy born of the Syrian conflict was sensitively handled and the satirical humour was aimed exclusively at politicians and those in the media who, after seeing the horrific photo of toddler Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach, stopped referring to those fleeing hardship as "a swarm" and came up with "a new twist of them being humans". It was all a very difficult line to tread and Screenwipe did it beautifully.

On a side note, the music used for this segment was the achingly gorgeous An Ending, a Beginning by Dustin O'Halloran, who is the man responsible for scoring the hit Amazon series Transparent.

TV review: Charlie Brooker's 2015 Wipe

Charlie Brooker's end-of-the-year Wipes have become essential viewing. They are the best way of making some kind of sense of the mess the world is in today. And this year's edition was no exception. Except there was a problem. 2015 is probably the bleakest year since Brooker has been doing these shows.

Frequent have been the calls to turn Brooker's satirical Wipe strand into a weekly venture in the vein of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. Sadly, Brooker's schedule - Netflix has ordered a dozen Black Mirrors - means that we'll have to settle for the customary six-part series and this annual end-of-year roundup. Aided by beacons of truth Philomena Cunk and Barry Shitpeas, Brooker rattles through 12 months packed almost overwhelmingly with incident - not to mention deep gloom.

11 absolutely zinger quotes from Charlie Brooker's 2015

Charlie Brooker's 2015 Screen Wipe gave us another darkly funny rundown of the year.

Radio Times review

Whatever horrors the world has endured over the past 12 months - war, pestilence, terrorism and Piers Morgan's new presenting gig on Good Morning Britain (only kidding, Piers), then we can always be sure of some traditional comforts. One is that Charlie Brooker and friends will extract some comic mileage in his now-traditional end-of-year round-up.

Joined by contributors Doug Stanhope, Morgana Robinson (complete with her extraordinary Russell Brand impersonation) and Diane Morgan as the fabulously vacuous pundit Philomena Cunk, laughter appears guaranteed. Page Three and Cecil the Lion may all have died this year, but smart, sassy satire is alive and well on BBC Two.