For those of you who haven’t, yet, been introduced to theslightly weird and dark world of Charlie Brooker, get yourselves over to BBC2on Thursday nights at 10pm.
For those of you are familiar with Charlie Brooker, you’llalready know that he provides the best comedy out there – viciously satirical.
His current series of Weekly Wipe got off to a brilliant start. Charlie Brooker was as misanthropic,depressed and angry as ever. He pokesfun at everything. Sometimes with warmthand appreciation of the brilliance of something e.g. there is a bit of spoofingof Wolf Hall that gives theimpression that Charlie Brooker really enjoyed the BBC2 drama. However, when he wants to be vicious, hedoesn’t hold back – the mash-up of TopGear was merciless, and went for the jugular.
This series is even better, because he has toned down theswearing. I am not prudish, and some bad language definitely can add humour.But Charlie Brooker, in the past, wasn’t able to complete 3 words without oneof them being unrepeatable. He has tonedit down, by his standards, but he has lost none of his aggressive and satiricalbite; and the swearing count is still ludicrously high, probably one in every10 words now.
But, the Show is not just Charlie Brooker. He provides aplatform for some brilliant comic interludes for a number of other “characters”.Philomena Cunk’s Moments of Wonder isbrilliant.
But, the show is mainly about the news, politics and currentaffairs. And Charlie’s brilliant acerbic swipes at the big stories about Charlie Hebdo and The Sun’s Page 3 were clever. And, it is the cleverness of hisobservations and analysis, that makes all the distasteful humour work –basically, he is accurate in his satirical attacks, and expresses them withimmense misanthropic wit.
This is the weekly news told with humour - it includes real footage of the news; and is clever postmodern stuff that mocks and comments on The News. He is at his most vitriol when he talks about the right-wing US News station, Fox News.
