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Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe
Format	Television Review
Created by	Charlie Brooker
Starring	Charlie Brooker
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	27
Production
Running time	30-50 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC Four
Original airing	2 March 2006
External links
Official website
IMDb profile

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is a British television review programme broadcast on BBC Four by Charlie Brooker. It is similar in tone to Brooker's Screen Burn column which he writes in The Guardian newspaper’s Guide supplement every Saturday. The programme contains reviews of current shows, as well as stories and commentary on how television is produced.

Format

Screenwipe is a television programme about television programmes; the cost, the surprising amount of work and bureaucracy involved, how programmes are selected for broadcast and (usually scathing) analysis of specific programmes and genres. Brooker often pays particular attention to more obscure channels on satellite, Freeview and cable, such as those dedicated to gambling, shopping, horoscopes and pornography. He explores the probable effects of television on society and how programmes can often create in the viewer feelings of inadequacy, depression, fear and anxiety. To balance things, one segment of each show is usually dedicated to positive reviews, with analysis on why the style and content are so absorbing.

Much of the programme is filmed in Brooker's living room, with shots of him sitting in front of his TV (and laptop) with Sky Digital remote in hand talking to camera, occasionally bellowing insults or sarcastic comments at whatever happens to be shown at the time, interspersed with shots of TV shows. Occasionally he will make use of props for the sake of humour, including a "seance trumpet" to mock Colin Fry's performance and an oven glove with a smiley face into which he claims to channel his unfulfilled emotions.

When not in the living room, Brooker presents segments on various pieces of television, different genres or peculiarities of production. Instead of actors, these sections often feature members of the Screenwipe production crew to illustrate points, for example the director Al Campbell as a comedian called "Barry Shitpeas" and researcher Mike Bradley in a number of roles. The theme tune is "A.M. 180" by Grandaddy.

Episodes

The first full series finished with an extended edition on US television billed as Screenwipe USA. A Christmas special was broadcast on 21 December 2006 and a review of the year 2006 was broadcast on 31 December 2006. A third series 'with a massively increased budget' (according to a spoof voiceover at the end of the final episode from the second series), was revealed to have been commissioned on 9 May 2007. The 3rd series was preceded by a mini-Screenwipe on 12 May (shown on BBC2's The Culture Show), which reviewed Grease is the Word and Any Dream Will Do. Shortly after the 3rd series concluded, a Screenwipe clip show was shown on BBC Two, with repeats of the series airing on the channel in the weeks following. The third series featured a number of episodes focussing on specific themes, such as television news coverage and reality television series.

The 4th series of Screenwipe began airing on BBC Four on Tuesday 18th November 2008. The first episode dealt with (among other things) Manuelgate and television production costs (and the effect of the credit crunch on said costs). The second was focused on the changes in television advertising throughout its history, and the third was an extended edition comprised entirely of Brooker's interviews with prestigious writers such as Russell T Davies and Tony Jordan.

Humour

The humour of the show is usually based in sarcasm and cutting remarks, in a similar style to Harry Hill's TV Burp, or The Soup. Screenwipe can be characterised as being intellectually harsher, however, with Brooker often making over-the-top — and slightly unbalanced — moral comparisons between the seeming attitude of certain programmes, and the logical conclusions of that attitude if it were turned towards real life. On occasion Brooker has also drawn comparison between the escapades of Television characters and his own ordeal on the toilet. Examples of this include send ups of Heroes and Britannia High.

Brooker often displays archive footage of various shows, but alters the viewer's perception through near stream-of-consciousness narration and/or ironic juxtaposition with contrasting footage or sound, e.g. highlighting what he believes is the organised crime feel of Dragons' Den by running the trumpet solo from The Godfather over the original dialogue. He has also been known to make jokes at the expense of his own show and himself, in particular making light of his supposed resemblance to Laurence Fishburne, and in the first episode of the third series he claimed he had "a face like a paedophile walrus". Also of note was the deliberate mention of Victor Lewis-Smith, described by the 'TV Insider' being interviewed (and presumably written by Brooker) as "kind of like a rich man's you". Lewis-Smith co-wrote and presented a similar show in the late nineties called TV Offal which Brooker sarcastically and knowingly claims to have no knowledge of.

Despite his derogatory and insulting remarks aimed at many television shows, people, and near enough everything and everyone, Brooker does show his happier side and has spoken of his liking for certain US drama series including The Shield; Deadwood; The Wire; Mad Men; and the most recent version of Battlestar Galactica; as well as the current series of Doctor Who; and older British programmes such as Jacob Bronowski's documentary The Ascent of Man. Brooker singles out Bronowski for praise regarding his style of presentation describing it as 'a bit like taking a warm bath in university juice' .

Brooker often makes a point laying light praise upon unlikely targets, such as Five's morning programmes aimed at pre-school age children, stating, "There isn't a single piece of negativity in the whole thing and that's what you need at this time in the morning."

Animations

The show is also notable for using animations produced by internet animator David Firth. To date the show has used eight of Firth's original creations. The 2006 Christmas Special featured a special appearance from Firth's deranged alter-ego, Jerry Jackson, whose cartoon appeared substituting for an animation that Firth had created beforehand. This original animation was rejected by the BBC on the grounds that it was far too offensive to be broadcast on TV. Firth recently announced on his website that the BBC had asked him to produce an animation for each episode of the second series of Screenwipe. Three were shown but the fourth, a Jerry Jackson cartoon, was once again rejected by the BBC. Firth stated in a post on Fat-Pie.com that "Jerry's [cartoon] was about Political Correctness on TV and contained a certain degree of sarcasm, yet sarcasm the TV company didn't see the funny side of, and they refused to use it". The third series saw Firth produce four more short animations (of which three were aired) entitled 'The World Within A Sock', in which a group known as The Establishment buys the year 2008.¹

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker's News Wipe

The BBC have commissioned a spin-off show entitled Charlie Brooker's News Wipe after a successful pilot that was made during post-production of Brooker's E4 show Dead Set. The show will deal with current affairs and will air on BBC4 in 2009.²

References

Links

• Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe at bbc.co.uk

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 4 December 2008, at 02:55.

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