Friday, December 21, 2007

Festive cheer

Right, this is an order: if you missed the 'Screenwipe' Christmas special on BBC4 last night, WATCH ONE OF THE REPEATS.* Further proof, if proof be need be, that Charlie Brooker is the funniest misanthrope alive, a man with sackfuls of sarcasm and a zero tolerance policy towards fools - or anyone else for that matter.

As a TV critic (with the emphasis on the critic), he's a bit like a pig wallowing around gleefully in shit, showing only a passing interest in snouting for truffles in preference for putting himself through countless celebrity talent show contests just so he can come up with lines like the one about Laura Beale from off of 'EastEnders' winning 'Just The Two Of Us' dueting with Marti Pellow and thinking she could hammer out a tune when she in fact sounded like an out-of-tune hammer...

Perhaps the biggest tribute you can pay 'Screenwipe' is to say that it makes me hope programme-makers keep on coming up with new ideas for shit, braindead, lowest-common-denominator telly just so Brooker's still got subject material to work with.

(Actually, you could just watch it at your own leisure in three parts here, here and here. In't YouTube brilliant?!)

2 comments:

Betty said...

Have got the Brooker show lined up on Sky Plus. It'll make a change from the endless adaptations of Victorian novels that we've been watching, what with it being Christmas. If I see another child die of typhoid or someone threatened with the workhouse I think I'll combust!

Ben said...

What did the Victorians do for us? Well, gave programme-makers ways to fill the festive listings, for a start...