Just because it's the funniest thing I've seen in a long while.* I may also have been quite bored recently.



*Note for people who don't obsessively follow the doings of St Charlie of Brooker: On the Screenwipe Xmas special, Charlie gave new names to the Gladiator's from this year's Sky revival.

8 years ago, the American people had their democracy stolen by someone who took a shit in it, then gave it back to the grieving populace, then stole it again, whilst the world looked on. More in sadness than in anger, global civilisation said to itself, "how did they let that happen?"

I was engaging in a bit of nostalgia down at TV Go Home earlier, and I found this proof that we knew it was going to be bad before it even started:



Whatever else the New Year brings, at least that's over.

Yay, Screenwipe is back!

And I learn from the Graun that they recently had a hack day which resulted in this:


The Charlian! As Zero Cool might say, a truly righteous hack.

Edit:
I'd just like to point out that I'm so far ahead of the blog curve today that I didn't nick this from Chicken Yoghurt. And his source. With bleeding edge commentary like this, how long before my 'let tiny people live in statues to offset losses from the Icelandic disaster' plan is taken up by the Treasury?

**DEAD SET SPOILER WARNING**

Just watched Dead Set episode 1. That was amazing - if anything it's better than 28 Days. I know it's early days but on the strength of what I've seen so far, it might even be better than Dawn of the Dead (I agree with Mr Brooker about this one - the original Dawn is the best zombie flick of all time).

I think what I like about it is that it actually takes a novel approach to the zombie. Usually zombies are metaphors (like consumerism for Dawn or suburban nihilism for Shaun or the proletarian masses in Land. In Dead Set the zombies are claret-stained highlighters, underscoring unpleasant societal and human truths and hammering home the worthlessness of us as a race.

It's deeply misanthropic (at least episode 1 was, I'm going to assume that more admirable/less contemptible human features will rise to the surface over the next four nights or it's just going to be too relentlessly grim to watch - and more importantly for E4 to have commissioned) in the best possible sense. I thought there was a real sense of moral compromise about the central character and of course all the rest of the cast seem to embody the various traits of selfishness, self-importance, callousness, jealousy, and idiocy.

And yet there's no sense that the zombie hordes are a kind of Plague of Egypt, a moral judgement to be carried out with vindictiveness. It's more that we've been caught with our trousers down, and the irrelevance and absolute ridiculousness of our national interests (or at least those of a significant section of the culture industry) has been exposed.

And yet of course, the questionable nature of BB has never really been hidden, just largely unacknowledged. Something implied, I think, in the portrayal of everyone involved in its production and that poignant shot of an abandoned banner with the word 'cunt' in large friendly pink letters on it, lying in a puddle.


The final, rather neat touch here is that it is probably the only way to get someone snooty like me to care about any of the Big Brother housemates. Charlie Brooker has finally got me watching BB. And I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see...

So in short, I liked it, I think it's a really strong piece of telly, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it develops.

With the imminent return of Scooby Doo: Cardiff to our screens (next Wed, BBC something, some point during primetime), I thought it appropriate to remind us all of what the last series was really like.

Plus, I got Dawn of the Dumb for Xmas and it's a brilliant quote.

"the award for the Year's Most Jarring Show goes to the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, which somehow managed to feel like both a multi-coloured children's show and a heaving sex-and-gore bodice-ripper at the same time. The constant clash of mutually-incongruous tones meant watching it felt like stumbling across a hitherto secret episode of Postman Pat in which Pat runs down 15 villagers while masturbating at the wheel of his van. Interesting, but possibly aimed at madmen." 

Any thoughts?