ITT an open and frank discussion about the journalist, critic and polemecist Charlie Brooker

As long as they can do it well (xxxp). Even Bangs was usually below par when writing about his heroes as opposed to sticking the boot in.

he's the guy that likes running blacks over, yeah?

xpost...?

Favourite Music: great fan of pendulum and dj fresh ( drum n bass) dont like all that mc'ing crap any more, love the verve, oasis, kaiser chiefs, the kooks, razorlight, blur, arctic monkeys, babyshambles and all that kinda stuff partial to bit of house and techno but not very often mind.....
Favourite TV Programmes:silent witness is great oh and al murray whenever he is on he the best english comedian who loves ENGLAND....well im ashamed to admit it but i do like eastenders and corrie too....
Favourite Films:roots, schinders list, over 50's, pretty much anything really

Bilious ranting is very easy to badly and very hard do well, like acoustic guitar ballads or something.

it's easy to do well! especially if you travel by tube every day. seriously if Britain got rid of the tube the entire audience for Brooker and similar would evaporate.

al murray whenever he is on he the best english comedian who loves ENGLAND...

This is the best bit.

by Britain I mean erm...London and other tubed areas!

i don't use the tube

Rather unfortunate metaphor there (xxxxp).

I'm trying to find the article on the BBC News website bemoaning the lack of video games programming on television that made no mention of Videogaiden, despite the fact that, at the time of publication, BBC Scotland was midway through airing series two...

TH - to be fair, that was a television special on FX, which I think was prior to the network screening season five (I only saw it off torrent last weekend, so I don't know the precise date, but it did seem to be talking about season four in the past tense). It was the bit he did about it in one of the Screenwipe episodes that I was referring to.

My problem with the editing thing was that it didn't seem to say anything other than "Reality TV programmes are edited". It didn't have much of a point, and it wasted rather too much time in the making of it. I got the same feeling off last night's episode of Dead Set, oddly - no much happened, and the way in which it happened wasn't particularly interesting (to be fair, I also got the feeling that was due to it being a one-hour episode that had got lopped in two).

On the other hand, I found his bit in (I think) episode one of Screenwipe about the costs involved in making a shot of him falling off a log quite enlightening. The researchers (I presume) on the programme are also extremely handy at digging up obscure footage - the song about students from a 70s episode of "That's Life!", for instance, or the bits from Sky News where they announced that Harold Pinter was dead, then corrected themselves upon realising that he wasn't dead but had instead received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Brooker's got the air of a man who reckons he's been promoted above his station and seems rather in fear of losing his position. He's not entirely sure how to handle his reputation - unless, of course, he's just trying to project an air of vulnerability to allow him to get away with it - or how to balance his serious and funny personae. I do watch Screenwipe regularly, and quite enjoy it, but it feels like it never goes as far as it should, like there's always something being held back.

I'm not writing very good sentences here, I do apologise.

His rant about the incessant cynical MADDIE news coverage/rolling news was good. who cares if this stuff is "obvious" anyway? it's not happening anywhere else on TV and the visual aspect almost always helps. Archive footage always good. Of course it could do more but couldn't we all.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=541368326#/group.php?gid=57150080706

lol single issue voters who think they should be allowed to do robberies because there are paedos about

I don't read his Guardian stuff much these days so only read the 'hypocritical' (yeah probably, but all the examples brought up e.g. Sezer were not recent) piece last night, along with his self-indulgent (how could it not be?) Road Trip article which at least really made me want to do a similar journey.

i like charlie brooker, but i sometimes think that the thing he loves most about the wire is getting to vicariously enjoy the adventures of someone who looks like a chiseled version of himself:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/contributor/2007/09/28/charlie_brooker_140x140.jpg

http://www.ghostinthemachine.net/mcnulty.jpg

xp i think the argument that it's obvious, or too rant based, is non-brooker-specific. it's depressing that there are paid cynics, and there's that lapse into all the 'is everything shit' books, but it's not like there isn't enough shit around to write two columns a week on it.

I'm quite enjoying Dead Set but only because I love end-of-the-world zombie bollocks and will willingly lap up anything thrown at me. As satirical document it is way, way, way below Dawn Of The Dead. Davina as zombie IS amusing though. That he's nicked the aesthetic 100% from 28 Days Later shows his lack of actual original thought, I think (as does it not actually being very satirical). It's real point-and-laugh stuff, not at all hahaha-oh-fuck-what-no-surely-not like Chris Morris was at his best.

Morris jumped the shark when the Jam sketch about bereaved parents taking tiny coffins for walks aired, in my mind. Brooker, in picking up Morris' baton, started way past the shark anyway. He can't see the shark, it's behind him. I don't think he's particularly interesting at all.

I'm not sure there are any fictional British TV shows currently on that are more interesting than Dead Set but would like to hear people's suggestions+reasoning

Also his birth name's not Charles but Charlton = wtf, no wonder he's angry.

"Interesting" is an... interesting qualifier to use. The only fictional TV program I watch with any regularity is Hollyoaks.

I'm not sure there are any fictional British TV shows currently on that are more interesting than Dead Set but would like to hear people's suggestions+reasoning

wouldn't know, I don't watch much TV!

me neither

but xpost yeah i didn't mean to confuse Brooker's 'interestingness' as a critic/TV personality (where he remains at least distinctive despite the running into the ground of the schtick) with the interestingness of the show (more interesting conceptually and contextually than in practice perhaps)

who cares if this stuff is "obvious" anyway? it's not happening anywhere else on TV and the visual aspect almost always helps.

It's just not enough, though, but BBC Four's treatment of it acts like it is, and it feels like it could be a lot more than it is, cos a lot of the programme does feel like filler. Brooker's need to keep dropping his zings gets in the way of stuff and takes up a lot of room (I'm aware that I'm oh-so-slightly prone to that myself, mind).

i think the argument that it's obvious, or too rant based, is non-brooker-specific. it's depressing that there are paid cynics, and there's that lapse into all the 'is everything shit' books, but it's not like there isn't enough shit around to write two columns a week on it.

I agree with schlump's view that Brooker's an instance of a mentality more than anything - see, for example, the way the other panellists on Mock The Week regard Frankie Boyle.

Surely not watching much TV kind of takes away a fair amount of interest in Brooker's schtick?

I was referring to his column mainly, it's not about TV all the time, and when it is usually about something pretty well known. I can't remember much of his TV shows really.

it's not like there isn't enough shit around to write two columns a week on it.

but these columns are part of the shit!

it's honestly reached a point where I'd be more interested in someone writing a column criticising the amount of "everything is shit" rhetoric around, apart from the fact that it'd be even more parasitic and worthless.

Armchair Theatre, peak time Pinter, ball in the street

Dude no one's forcing you to read any of this.

Now it's all kick a dude in the street.

I'm not saying that I think everything is shit by the way, if that's how it seems. Far from it.

Though you're right that kids used to kick a ball on the street.

Kids still do kick the ball in my street - bloody kids.

I blame the bloody parents.

Speaking of which, through most of my childhood, and whenever I could manage the time as a student, usually during the summer holidays, my brothers and I incessantly used to kick a ball against a wall at the bottom of the garden in the course of playing the game DONKEY.

It was only towards the end of this halcyon decade or so, at the end of one particular summer holiday, that a women from the house just beyond the end of the bottom of the garden shouted with more anger than I had hitherto possible

'IF YOU DON'T STOP KICKING THAT BLOODY BALL AGAINST THAT BLOODY WALL I WILL COME AROUND AND THROTTLE YOU.'

They had a dog that barked though. Sometimes.

Also, who's Biffo?

'had hitherto thought possible' of course.

http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/images/biffo1.jpg

That's all I've got Nick

omg if i hear one more kid walk past my house bouncing a ruddy ball on the pavement, i'll grab it off him and charge them tuppence to get it back. i will.

It's time a wall of society was once again built on top of every child.

Nick - Biffo is the writer Paul Rose, formerly the man responsible for Digitiser, the video games section of Channel 4 Teletext.

maybe Biffo is just too socially inept

So Biffo is to Paul Scott what Charlie Brooker is to me?

(Jokes, bruv.)

Well, Biffovision (his pilot for BBC3) wasn't particularly great. He does get a fair amount of work, but he's definitely not at the same level of recognition as Brooker, mainly cos Digitiser was much more of a cult thing (and it was about video games. Well, ostensibly)

William I think your sentences are just fine. I like Frankie Boyle though and wonder what you mean by this - see, for example, the way the other panellists on Mock The Week regard Frankie Boyle.

I don't think I've ever seen Mock the Week - how do they regard him?

he's deemed the most popular and most 'outrageous' of the show's regulars, top of the hierarchy after the host, i can't think of a suitable analogy.

he has his own butler.

I only knew of Brooker from that Screenwipe thing. He comes across as a younger Adrian Chiles.

he's deemed the most popular and most 'outrageous' of the show's regulars, top of the hierarchy after the host, i can't think of a suitable analogy.

I'd say Paul Merton, but Merton's been a bigger draw than the host for years. Maybe Alan Davies on QI (though he's a bit of whipping boy, and not very funny)?

I saw Alan Davies yesterday! At the NT!

yeah i was gonna say Merton but he's often the only actual comic on HIGNFY whereas on MTW they're all comics (except when Laverne was on).

it's really annoying how on QI Davies is seen as the wacky pet but yeah similar deal

You know the bald guy on MTW, I only just realised that he's on every week.

'dour' sorts, one spelling mistake corrected.

Found it p tiresome, some lolz. He's v bad at liking things.

touch of cloth 3 is winning me over with its relentless commitment to appalling puns tbh

keep forgetting to watch those but they're the only thing by this chump I've actually wanted to watch since idk

It was alright, actually

I thought I was done with this kind of thing but Cunk on Shakespeare was excellent. Diane Morgan is so funny, I love her voice and her sublime way of swearing.. I read an interview with her and Philomena was supposed to be a posh dimwit but she auditioned for the part and Cunk is now Diane Morgan, a northern dimwit.

So did anybody watch the “Death to 2020” special on Netflix? It’s kinda disappointing. It’s like Netflix paid them to do a Screenwipe for an American audience with a higher production value and lots more celebrities, but the writing is only like 40-60% of where it needs to be.

It’s not the worst transatlantic adaption, but it isn’t what it should be. The “Antiviral Wipe” ep they put out in May is far stronger.

Sucked.

Major example of TV getting lost in translation.

Why get sam Jackson to try and sound like brooker? It just didn't come off.

Beyond that though, the main prob it has was how lacking in teeth the material was. Just a very MOR satire.