Watch this: Newswipe Posted by Gargleman

Caustic TV critic, journalist and writer Charlie Brooker started out as a cartoonist for PC Zone magazine, before going on to create the wonderful TV Go Home website (and book) and then become a minor TV personality and Guardianista celebrity, who has apparently dated the very reality TV stars he publicly mocks.

This is all fairly well known.

Less well known is that Charlie is short for Charlton, which doesn’t sound as cool for a slightly geeky, chunky journalist from Reading as it does for the gun-toting Hollywood hero Charlton Heston.

Charlie Brooker’s new show is Newswipe – a scathing commentary on TV news – which begins tonight on BBC4, and apparently its very much in the vein of his previous series Screenwipe, which did the same for television in general. This is good news, as Screenwipe was very entertaining indeed, aside from the sometimes desperately poor animation/poetry/tosspot guest spots, which suggested that Brooker may be further into the Shoreditch Twat/Nathan Barley set than he’d like us to think.*

Anyway, Newswipe does look promising, particularly as it features contributions from Bad Science’s Dr Ben Goldacre, documentary genius Adam Curtis and Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News.

Newswipe is on BBC4 on Wednesday 25th March at 10.30pm. And on iPlayer after that, natch.

*Last minute edit: Apparently Newswipe still includes poetry. Blech!

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