Newswipe With Charlie Brooker

TV Review: Newswipe with Charlie Brooker

We're three episodes into Newswipe with Charlie Brooker and, if we're waiting for it to hit stride, like Mr Brooker suggested, then I'm going to have to prepare myself. You see, Newswipe is fast becoming Another Charlie Brooker Classic!

Last week Charlie Brooker's characteristically brilliant Newswipe started, taking a pin to the over-inflated lilo of news journalism. He's the only man who can make quantitative easing funny and has the gift of seeming, even after several hugely popular series, like a normal person who has invaded a studio.

News waffle was the enemy on Charlie Brooker's Newswipe - the new show from the newspaper critic. Newswipe began on an odd note - tortuously spending five minutes explaining what it was, when anyone who'd seen it in the listings had simply thought: "Oh, Newswipe. That will be like Brooker's previous series - Screenwipe - but about current affairs, instead of telly." Also - and perhaps inevitably - Newswipe had the faint, cordite smell of The Day Today clinging to its hair. For half an hour it was a show that basically wanted to say, in the words of Chris Morris: "These are the headlines. I wish to God they weren't."

Still, Brooker's schtick - an intelligent, liberal man brought to the brink of despair simply by looking at the BBC's homepage - is as welcome dissecting the German high-school shootings as it is Holby; and having an ROFL Newsnight is something to cling to in the schedules.

On a good day, Charlie Brooker can make Brian Clough look like Kofi Annan. He's a kind of genius of spleen and when it's directed at the right target it can be deeply gratifying to watch him in action. But Newswipe with Charlie Brooker doesn't work quite as well as Screenwipe, the television-based series from which it has been spun off.

What Brooker promises is a "fun, snarky, weekly digest" to help less committed viewers keep up with "the world's most complicated soap opera" - the news. And when he concentrates on style it can be both funny and telling. To have the visual metaphors used to tart up news reports on "quantitive easing" dipped in acid until only the witless desperation of the endeavour was left was not only entertaining but salutary. There was also a striking contribution from Nick Davies, on how PR companies can effectively manipulate the news agenda. But elsewhere it occasionally strikes you as a one-man Have I Got News for You, and the contributions from people who aren't Charlie Brooker fall sadly short of the cutting precision of the man whose name is in the title.

Newswipe With Charlie Brooker was glorious: perceptive and rude, it showed the inanity of 24-hour news (the endless repetition, the mad montages of images) as well as how little it actually explains, as it feverishly tries to move stories forward. The ending (Brooker as the anchor burying his head disconsolately as the weight of misery he has just imparted to the nation takes hold) was particularly clever. Brooker even advanced a plausible explanation for "quantitative easing" beyond one broadcaster's use of a model railway. Sadly this succinct explanation was too piercing for a brain already turned to mush by 24-hour news. Perhaps he could use some little plastic bricks and flying pigs next time.

TV Review: Newswipe with Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker is becoming something of a proper TV star now. He's definitely on the ascendency, not that he'd ever let on. Just look at how Newswipe became Newswipe with Charlie Brooker. You don't get your name tacked on the end unless you're making a stir.

Ever wondered why we don't have a British Daily Show? Our own Jon Stewart to take on the media and Jon Snow's ties? Well that's roughly the idea behind Charlie Brooker's new show - Newswipe. A spin-off of his Screenwipe series, it aims to provide "a fun snarky weekly digest that will help keep you and hopefully me on top of the news soap opera".

As eagle-eyed readers will have spotted, it's weekly - and therefore unlikely to reach the "alternative news" status The Daily Show holds. It also lacks the US show's fast turnaround - in the opening episode we get gags about the Fritzl case, the Pope, and the school shootings in Germany - but nothing about the coverage of Jade Goody.

It's good, funny in patches, and worth watching. Too often, perhaps, Brooker points out the obvious (guess what? The media focuses on bad news!), but it's at its best when cutting between quotes to highlight media hypocrisy (something The Daily Show is particularly expert at).

A bit more of that, and a bit less directionless Brooker bellowing, and we might have a contender.

Charlie Brooker Newswipe Interview

Interviewing Charlie Brooker could be a daunting task but if you peer through the acerbic slights in Brooker's work, I always got the impression he was a really nice bloke... an approachable chap... the kind I'd get on with just fine.