Newswipe

Newswipe with Charlie Brooker was a British news review programme broadcast on BBC Four written and presented by Charlie Brooker. It is similar to Brooker's Screenwipe series which is also shown on BBC Four.

A first series of six episodes ran between 25 March 2009 and 29 April 2009. A second series began on 19 January 2010 and concluded on 23 February 2010.

This series is part of a group of Charlie's show refereed to as "the wipe series" which includes Screenwipe, Gameswipe and Weekly Wipe.

Format
The aim of Newswipe was to expose the inner workings of news media, just as Screenwipe does to television in general.[2]

The series was a comic, thoughtful and acerbic analysis of recent news coverage. Newswipe also looked at the way the news is presented to the public. Experts were on hand to pick apart certain stories and analysed the news media's obsessions.

Charlie Brooker commented: "This is new territory for me: I'm no current affairs expert. Just like, I suspect, many people, when I tune into the news I often feel like I've wandered into episode 389 of the world's most complex soap opera. So it's also about me trying to make sense of a bewildering and often bloody stupid world."[3]

Like Screenwipe, much of the programme was filmed in Brooker's living room, with shots of him sitting in front of his TV (and laptop) with remote in hand talking to camera, occasionally bellowing insults or sarcastic comments at whatever happens to be shown at the time, interspersed with shots of shows.

Related pages

 * List of Newswipe episodes