Wipeout

What little of Charlie Brooker's stuff I've read (both in the Guardian and in his 'Screenwipe' book) I've very much enjoyed, so it's disappointing that it's taken me so long to catch an installment of his TV programme.

Astute, acerbic and unwilling to suffer fools gladly when they can be pilloried to comic effect instead, Brooker is ideally cut out for the job of TV commentator - and he doesn't make a bad job of presenting either. He's in his element, whether dissecting C4's extremely dubious series 'The Sex Inspectors' or detailing the Ten Biggest Cocks In Advertising.

But there was more to this particular installment of 'Screenwipe' than just Brooker - namely, Grace Dent's look at star-crossed lovers in soaps (during which she pointed out that the relationship between Les and Cilla in 'Coronation Street' is founded on little more than chips, booze and rutting) and Stewart Lee's compare-and-contrast exploration of the differences between 70s programmes for teenagers such as 'Children Of The Stones' and 'The Changes' (both of which seemed seriously unsettling and thought-provoking) and the likes of 'Skins' today (full of confident, vacuous, selfish young things shagging and taking drugs).

How galling, then, to discover it was the last in the current series.