If you're only going to read Six Hundred and Fifty One Words on Saint Raymond Nonnatus Day

It’s Saint Raymond Nonnatus Day, and we here at Televised Revolution want to celebrate the only way we know how! If you were only going to read 651 words today (you barely literate hick!) then I would recommend you have to read one of Charlie Brooker’s “Screen Burn” columns from the Guardian. These are some of the most amazing writing you’ll find on television. You can argue that Brooker uses filthy language and uses too much comedy in his analysis, so can’t be taken seriously. I would suggest you can never write accurately or whole heartedly about the Media of TV without taking on the style and form of the smutty and absurd product that’s broadcast.

How would you start a review of a new series of X-Factor? Brooker writes:

Animals, all of us: dying, desperate animals, alone in our skulls, in our souls, quietly tortured by our foreknowledge of death, wandering a mindless rock, baying with pain or killing each other. That’s the working week. Come Saturday we crave relief. Slumped defeated in the corner, our flagellated cadavers scarcely held together by the gentle cocooning pressure of our armchairs, wearily we pivot our milky, despairing eyes in the direction of our television sets, seeking consolation or distraction or maybe just a little inconsequential merriment: a dab of balm to spread on these anguished bones, this empty heart.

What Brooker does is position some hyperbole around how we watch TV, what it does, and how it’s being read in homes. It’s insightful, intelligent, and thought provoking. With this in mind, Brooker gets to be independent from the general ridiculousness of the TV industry and press releases posing as reporting; he certainly doesn’t have to play nice with others, and that’s what makes it the most trustworthy and honest TV writing you’ll find.

In my own personal experience, I have to say that there is a great deal of sensitivity with what gets said around television. Not last week I was censured on another TV site for using the word “vagina” in the same sentence as a certain female celebrity. The concern to play nice and keep up good relations with the industry is sometimes getting in the way of talking about what is actually going on inside TV. Without open and hostile analysis of TV in papers and on blogs, all that’s left then is Academia for open discussion, and with its long run-up time to publication, and being much less industry or fan friendly, it’s not really enough.

How does Brooker end a review? Honestly. You read a lot of reviewers that only hate television, Brooker tends to actually like just as much as he hates; although hate filled reviews are always going to be much more entertaining.

To tune in is to witness a shocking mass rally devoted to the slaughter of basic melody that sets music back 50 years. The X-Factor not only fails to provide consolation for the futile horrors of human existence – it’s not even as good as it used to be.

Look around for more of Brooker’s work, the wonderful “Screen Wipes” that litter YouTube, his own involvement in TV with “Nathan Barley” and “Dead Set”, his “Screen Burn” column, and have a look at the now-finished Season 1 of the TV panel/discussion show “You Have Been Watching”.