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Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe Guide to TV
- 28 March 2007, BBC4, 10:30pm
Brooker’s in danger of disappearing up his own arse, but is still caustically funny
It’s all a bit too postmodern. A collection of clips from Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe have been complied into a single special edition going behind the scenes of TV. The result? Precisely the sort of thing that Brooker writes so caustically about in his peerless Screen Burn column in the Guardian Guide every Saturday.
The show is built round Brooker stalking round spouting sharp, obscenity-ridden insights like a podgy Mark E Smith. He takes us from clip to clip building up an image of just how pointless TV really is, reserving the greatest contempt for the preening 'talent'. There’s a lot of Brooker talking about the making of his own show, bringing in the producer, camera man etc. on screen. Even Brooker seems to realise his show is rapidly disappearing up its own arse.
Herein lies the problem. Brooker’s Screen Burn works so well because it’s savagely funny and written from an outside perspective. Now it’s on TV too it has become self-regarding parody. Brooker has morphed into a TV caricature of himself, regurgitating his column ("anus luvvie-fest Extras"). Saying that, Screen Wipe Guide to TV is still better than most things on the box, it’s just that his savage wit is so much more effective on the page than the screen.
Aaron Davies
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