I disown this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm4GiyyVKQQ
Charlie Brooker's Newswipe follows on from his excellent series Screenwipe, which took a cynical, bile-fuelled look at the media, and should have been more successful than it was. The thing is, it's on BBC4, the channel reserved for some excellent and thought-provoking late-night shows and endless documentaries. So it's not advertised much, despite being given the meaningless "channel of the year" award by... someone. Anyway, there is some excellent satire coupled with real analysis of how the role of the news seems to have shifted over the years. And it has been lauded for that. People have been known to call it, "The British Daily Show".
Which makes me angry. Because it isn't. The Daily Show is a variety programme that (extremely successfully) attempts to parody the news. Newswipe is a documentary-style show whose self-professed aim is to try and explain the news. It doesn't cover events as much as cover the way news programmes cover events, hopefully giving the viewer some insight into where the strings are being pulled. Both shows pour derision on Fox News, but in very different ways. Stewart's form is to play the more outrageous clips and hang jokes around them, leading off into sketches that expose the ridiculousness of what's being said. Brooker chooses a subject and tends to treat it as an essay, starting once with the rather self-consciously intellectual "If all the world's a stage, then news anchors are the greek chorus", taking you through the history of the phenomenon he's talking about, then coming to today's examples of it, drawing from many different sources. Which is where the cult of personality in news broadcasting links with Fox news. But there is always a gleeful note of doom about the whole business. You come out of it wondering if anything you're told is real at all, or if events are instigated purely on the basis that it is a slow news day. You laugh while you're watching the programme, but then you want to kill yourself.
Stewart has been pretending to be part of the system for so long that in a way, he is. See his interview with that terrible msnbc scapegoat. But Brooker is an onlooker who has done a little more research than the average person. He is horrified at what he finds and makes a television programme about it. And that is why not all current events comedy should be compared to the Daily Show. Even though I've done it twice now.
Also, "I've Never Seen Star Wars" is on BBC4 as well, and it is genius.
Charlie Brooker's Newswipe follows on from his excellent series Screenwipe, which took a cynical, bile-fuelled look at the media, and should have been more successful than it was. The thing is, it's on BBC4, the channel reserved for some excellent and thought-provoking late-night shows and endless documentaries. So it's not advertised much, despite being given the meaningless "channel of the year" award by... someone. Anyway, there is some excellent satire coupled with real analysis of how the role of the news seems to have shifted over the years. And it has been lauded for that. People have been known to call it, "The British Daily Show".
Which makes me angry. Because it isn't. The Daily Show is a variety programme that (extremely successfully) attempts to parody the news. Newswipe is a documentary-style show whose self-professed aim is to try and explain the news. It doesn't cover events as much as cover the way news programmes cover events, hopefully giving the viewer some insight into where the strings are being pulled. Both shows pour derision on Fox News, but in very different ways. Stewart's form is to play the more outrageous clips and hang jokes around them, leading off into sketches that expose the ridiculousness of what's being said. Brooker chooses a subject and tends to treat it as an essay, starting once with the rather self-consciously intellectual "If all the world's a stage, then news anchors are the greek chorus", taking you through the history of the phenomenon he's talking about, then coming to today's examples of it, drawing from many different sources. Which is where the cult of personality in news broadcasting links with Fox news. But there is always a gleeful note of doom about the whole business. You come out of it wondering if anything you're told is real at all, or if events are instigated purely on the basis that it is a slow news day. You laugh while you're watching the programme, but then you want to kill yourself.
Stewart has been pretending to be part of the system for so long that in a way, he is. See his interview with that terrible msnbc scapegoat. But Brooker is an onlooker who has done a little more research than the average person. He is horrified at what he finds and makes a television programme about it. And that is why not all current events comedy should be compared to the Daily Show. Even though I've done it twice now.
Also, "I've Never Seen Star Wars" is on BBC4 as well, and it is genius.