Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe

Charlie Brooker has to be one of my all time favourite people. His sense of humour is brilliant, and so is this show, Charlie Brookers Screenwipe. Screenwipe was first broadcast in 1996 and has had 5 series so far, not including his "spin off" Newswipe. Each programme is half an hour long and is broadcast on BBC Four, which in my opinion is a poor channel for this brillant show to be on, it should at least have a spot on BBC 3 but would also work well on BBC 2. Screenwipe is a program all about television ranging from reviews of programs, the cost of tv, different genres of programs, what goes into making tv, cost and laws regarding adverts etc. It is presented ...  Read the complete review

And so I decide to make another 'comeback' in review writing terms...this time to write about a couple of brilliant TV shows that I recommend 100%...so there's the impartiality out of the way - Ladies & Gentlemen, let me introduce to you, "Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe". First aired in 2006 and produced by Zeppotron, a subsidy of Endemol, it's a TV programme broadcast on BBC Four, and then often repeated later in the week on BBC Two by Charlie Brooker, based in a similar vein to his column every week in The Guardian newspaper. It's tone is often cynical, it's viewpoints often the pure thoughts of Brooker, but on the surface and deep down it is a ...  Read the complete review

Before I start, anyone expecting an impartial review of this almost popular TV show should consider themselves forewarned that Charlie Brooker is fairly close to being my ultimate hero. Well, just behind Stephen Fry at any rate. Yeah, I may be setting my sights low, but he does what I would love to do. He gets paid to do something he loves - watching TV - and rant about it. Ranting just happens to be a favourite pursuit of mine, but as yet no-one has paid me for it, instead moving a few seats away on the bus when I reach the ten-minute mark. So when I heard that he would be hosting his own show on BBC Four I just about soiled myself with delight. By which I ...  Read the complete review

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is something of a guilty pleasure for me. Whilst I find Brooker himself to be a sharp, witty, brilliant comic writer and exceptional critic, he often - and oh so very cynically - engages in the kind of hyperbolic, short-sighted, narrow-minded, vaguely chauvinistic blather so beloved of his audience, and the lot shot through with a wholly nauseating nostalgia for an age that never existed. During these intermittent reactionary spiels, Brooker wants us to believe that everyone is sat rapt before the Big Brother live feed 24 hours a day, wants us to believe that The X Factor or Britain's Got Talent are in any way a New Development, ...  Read the complete review

Guardian journalist and writer of Nathan Barley, Charlie Brooker has his own half hour review of the weekly tv on BBC3. Unlike Harry Hill's TV Burp, this definitely is not fun for all the family, with coarse language, incredibly offensive comments and very, very well thought out synopsis on programmes. This is very much an extension of Brooker's weekly tv column in Saturdays Guardian magazine and allows him to spout lyrical on anything he sees fit. Much of the time this can involve taking aim at the vacuous airtime filled by reality tv nonsense or actually talking up a programme if it is very, very good. The format of the programme is quite ...  Read the complete review