How TV Ruined Your Life s01e01 Review

How brilliant is Charlie Brooker? I've been a fan for years now, and whenever I watch him I'm just thinking 'damn, why can't I say things like that?'. Everything he says is just what I think, but in a brilliant way I could never articulate. The anger and snide remarks just remind us how silly the world is and remind us not to take ourselves so seriously. I don't think ladyfolks like him, my girlfriend rages out whenever he's on the screen.

Like I said, I've been following him for a few years now and his new show How TV Ruined Your Life is the classic Brooker format and feel, but with a significantly larger budget. He's still sitting on a sofa, watching TV, but rather than looking like he's sitting at home it looks like he's sitting in some post apocalyptic TV headquarters where he's gathered the remains of the BBC and sits doing the show to no-one.

left: old / right: new

There's also more sketches! Before they had Barry Shitpeas being hit in the face with a pie representing the News or something, now there's long parody's which take you a moment to realize aren't real. Like the morning show where a woman who's just murdered someone phones in to get advice off an experienced murder, or the brilliant mockery of 'shockumentaries' entitled 'What if: Pens got hot?'

I don't know what I like more... I kind of liked the cheap random bits in Classic Brooker, but some one these new extended sketches are so spot on... I think this series is gonna offer some real gems.

In case you missed it or have no idea who Charlie Brooker is, its just a show about television. Charlie is doing what he always does, showing us that TV is designed to influence you and (surprise surprise) it works. Sometimes we feel like the worlds falling apart around us, just because the news shows us the isolated bits of horror around the world. Really, almost everything is fine almost all of the time. This week he showed us how public service announcements are designed to tap into the fear-centre of the brain and the cheap tricks they use to achieve this.

A fantastic start to the season, I hope it continues to be this bloody brilliant.

EIGHT THUMBS UP.

If you have no idea who I'm talking about, get with the program over at Amazon with The Hell of it All, Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline and Screen Burn