White Noise
Charlie Brooker is a man with a mission. Quite what the mission is, I am not quite sure but I heartily recommend joining him on the journey. If Points Of View is the genial uncle of “TV shows about TV shows” then, tucked away on late night BBC4 you’ll find Screenwipe being the rebellious nephew with rings in his nose, a black, spiky mohican and kicking the neighbour’s cat. The widely-read, Guardian columnist can be found venting his spleen about whatever televisual treats have riled him in any particular week on his far too short a series (only four episodes? I demand more!). Readers of his Screenburn column will at least be ready for the style of his attack because an “attack” is exactly what you get… and he takes no prisoners. Mr Brooker will select a popular TV show or format, albeit a fairly easy target like “daytime”, “soap”, or “reality TV” and launch forth with commentary that puts into words exactly how we feel about what we’ve seen but have been a little too reticent to espouse.
Hunched over a pizza box in a grotty flat we find Charlie leering to camera and then to his telly as he (and we) despair at the state of the medium. He manages to be laugh out loud funny while trying, single handedly, to raise the standards of what we get shown, though I fear he’s doomed to failure. He doesn’t have ideas above his station and recognises himself as a little bit of an angry couch potato with slightly geeky tendancies who watches far more TV than should be deemed healthy (I know the feeling). However, all this vitriol adds more weight to his arguments when he finally turns to something that he likes or admires, at which times he can be generous, if a little less passionate, with his praise. On the downside, he seems to insist on using some hit-or-miss (and frankly downright bizarre) interludes in the form of cartoon sketches or contributions from guest reviewers that add little to the structure of the programme and generally leave me cold. The notable recent exception being Mark Gatiss’s tribute to the late Nigel Kneale.
Charlie Brooker is a TV reviewer for the 21st century and I’d love to see him turn his skills to something more in-depth, he could just be a contender for Clive James’s crown.
Tags: BBC4, Charlie-Brooker, General, Guardian, Mark-Gatiss, Nigel-Kneale, Points-Of-View, Screenburn, Screenwipe
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