You Have Been Watching

If Harry Hill's TV Burp gently pulls TV's leg, then Charlie Brooker's savage review show yanks limbs clean off, sticks what's left into a blender then posts the remains to programme makers as a warning.

The opposite of good clean family fun, Charlie Brooker's show is an animated version of his Guardian column in which he ruthlessly tears into telly. It helps, of course, that he is confined by neither taste nor decency. Hence his freedom to scoff at ITN's attempts to bury its embarrassing Jackson vs Diana funeral coverage, ending with a "fuck you ITN" and his description of Torchwood as "ChuckleVision with come shots". It's all classic Brooker, even if his comedian guests are often left as smirking onlookers unable to match the bile resulting from thousands of hours of TV viewing.

TV Review: You Have Been Watching

Weirdly, I think we're seeing what Charlie Brooker is really like as a person. The scowling, self-loathing ranter stuck in his flat on Screenwipe is as much a creation as anything David Bowie ever came up with. Sure, it's based on something within him, but to assume that he's constantly followed around by rainclouds is pretty stupid.

I am a big fan of TV critic Charlie Brooker, both in print and on screen. As his BBC4 show Screenwipe proved, no one else spews vitriol with such wit, charm and amiability. C4 obviously thinks so too, and has given Brooker his own TV based quiz show, You Have Been Watching.

And Brooker doesn't disappoint. He's as sharp, insightful and snide as ever. The problem is with the format, which foists three guests upon him. As they are nowhere near as funny as the host, their presence first becomes a distraction, then an irritation.

Much the same can be said about the quiz aspect of the show, which is treated with such bored disdain by Brooker that it makes you wonder why they bothered with it at all.

Get rid of the guests, get rid of the quiz and you would have something worth watching. Namely, Screenwipe.

However You Have Been Watching did unearth some splendid clips of bizarre television around the world, the best of which was from a blood-drenched combat recreation show pitting history's warriors against each other - Zulu versus William Wallace, Apache versus Ninja, culminating in the IRA taking on the Taliban in a car park. For the record, the IRA won.

I was fully expecting last week's series opener to not be much cop (I'm not as big a fan of Charlie Brooker as many others I know), but this was a real hoot.

After last week's patchy opener, let's hope that the quality of Charlie Brooker's latest TV-will-eat-itself improves substantially this week. I can't help feeling that the scrappy quiz format holds this back from being a scabrous discussion about the highs and lows of the week's television. Maybe the viewer interaction will help - all week, Brooker and his team have been compiling viewer observations about Torchwood: Children of Earth.

TV Review: You Have Been Watching

The show was laugh-out-loud funny and filled with the right mix of bile and fun. I imagine this must have been quite annoying for those of you out there itching to start a Brooker backlash. It certainly seems that Charlie Brooker can't make a bad television show as I'm rather excited at the prospect of watching the rest of this series!

You Have Been Watching 1.1 Review

YHBW was full of funny clips/reviews, amusing four way banter, and some enjoyable games. But the real surprise was seeing how comfortable Brooker appeared to be as the presenter, relishing the audience response and delighting in making everyone laugh while sharing his telly discoveries.

Charlie Brooker rarely puts a foot wrong but this 'Quiz' style series didn't seem to work.

What was good about it? Charlie's review of BBC1's The One Show, which hit every mark and made us really wish we were watching Screenwipe instead of this odd new series. The clips from American manly TV Deadliest Warrior which were so bad they raised the only true of the smile of the programme were also funny.

But what was bad about it? Perhaps our expectations were too high for this but it just felt thrown together with very little point. Did we really care who won the game? Of course not! Just review the series! We couldn't help but think that if Charlie Brooker didn't host this there's a massive chance he'd rip it to shreads on Screenwipe.

The Guardian's Charlie Brooker makes a leap from BBC4 to Channel 4 and midweek primetime for a new show. Rather than watching him shouting at a camera in his front room, here he's joined in the studio by as-yet-unannounced guests to host a new comedy quiz about the week's telly highlights and, much more likely, its cavernous lowlights. We will be watching.