Screen Burn by Charlie Brooker

finally that, yeah, sure, most shows are rubbish but since I only watch quality programming, I’m all right, yeah?
    Not according to Burke you’re not. With a combination of statistics, persuasion and simple logical reasoning, he puts a convincing case for the outright elimination of television; I won’t reveal his methods here – you’ll have to tune in, or scour around for a copy ofhis excellent book Get a Life , from which the bulk of this broadcast is lifted verbatim. Besides, you might agree with him, thereby putting me out of a job. In fact, ignore the guy. He’s a liar.
    Concise, compelling and refreshingly opinionated, Switch Off Now further benefits from the hilarious use of archive clips displaying TV at its most goonish and moronic; presented out of context, alongside facts about homicide, depression and alienation, they start to look very sinister indeed. He even makes the Teletubbies feel like something out of Brave New World (Junior Edition).
    By the end you’re likely to have agreed with at least 70 per cent of what Burke says. But you probably won’t switch off (and you definitely won’t follow his recommendations to the letter and crack your box in the face with a sledgehammer the moment the credits start to roll).
    Why? Well, the unfortunate irony is that Burke sets about attacking the mere existence of television in such a vastly entertaining manner your initial reaction is simply to sit there and wish shows like this were broadcast more often – programmes that actually reaffirm TV’s ability to inform (not educate) and entertain, as opposed to sedate and oppress. In fact, I could quite happily watch David Burke telling me to switch off the box for the rest of my life.
    The single hole in his argument is this: maybe some of the audience, who aren’t all staring at their boxes from within pits of lonely isolation, enjoy their addiction – particularly when there’s opinionated, thought-provoking stuff like this on. They should give him his own series.
       
     
    They didn’t .

‘Don’t let someone else make decisions for you’ [31 March]
     
    Outrage! This week’s Top Ten (C4) deals in banned records, and is linked, wonderfully enough, by veteran pantomime dame John Lydon, who’s been stuck on ‘sneer’ since 1977 and isn’t about to snap out of it now. Before introducing the first entry, he treats us toa mini-lecture on censorship, which naturally he’s opposed to. ‘Don’t let someone else make decisions for you,’ he commands us, thereby causing logical short circuits nationwide.
    Wafting towards old age, Lydon still has the most weirdly affected delivery since Frankie Howerd – he overemphasises every word, sometimes using audible italics; it’s like listening to a man sarcastically reading aloud from a poorly translated instruction manual. As usual, that now-familiar range of accusatory facial expressions, ping-ponging between camp Kenneth Williams outrage and the boggle-eyed mesmerisms of a cheap stage hypnotist accompany his vocal performance. Whenever he tires of looking askance with an eyebrow aloft, he simply leans forward to peer through the lens as if trying to read an insult scratched on your forehead in letters one millimetre high.
    The countdown itself contains few surprises – Frankie Goes to Hollywood turn up, as do Gainsbourg and Birkin, the Sex Pistols (naturally), Madonna, NWA and the witless 2 Live Crew. The recent surfeit of clip shows lends a slightly overfamiliar air to proceedings – the ‘Relax’ ‘legend’ was covered in I Love the Eighties a few weeks ago, for instance – but this is still immensely watchable, not least because most of the contributors have something of interest to say, for once.
    Accompanying the music are clips from self-consciously controversial videos, from the calculated visual outrage of ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ (Drugs! Nudity! Violence! Dull twenty-something media tossbores calling it fantastic!) to the loveless S&M