For those of you who don't know, Screen Wipe is a show that pokes a finger in the eye of the world of TV and is written by TV critic Charlie Brooker. In print, Brooker viciously rips the veins out of shows for our amusement... although I actually fear that he does it because he simply has to. When TV critics make the leap onto the very thing they pull apart, I usually find myself wanting them to fail miserably. Look at Garry Bushell. That's just not the case with Charlie Brooker. Why?

Well, Brooker is an expert at disassembling TV... not like a repair you clot.... but peeling away each layer of the supposed mystique until you can see what a horrible place the world of media really is. A large chunk of 'creative industries' is filled with self serving rat brains who sneer and hoot their way through life becoming more aroused with each self congratulatory pat on the back. Brooker has (seemingly) managed to dodge this and is left looking like a little boy lost in the supermarket. In fairness, this analogy only works if you can imagine that little boy screaming with disgust and kicking all the aisles down.

In The Screen Wipe Guide to TV (BBC4, Tuesday, 10pm), Brooker immediately rips up your notion of tellyworld and eats it in front of your face. Instead of going for a slick hello, he simply states that what you are about to watch is, in essence, a glorified clip show. This kind of disarming honesty leaves you with no other option but to watch.

This 'guide' was a compilation of all the bits that looked at how a TV show is made. In each Screen Wipe, we cut away from Brooker ranting about some horrendous show to look behind the camera. The soul sapping world of production meetings and the abuse of runners. These were all pieced together to make one very coherent show about the inner workings of evil.

This disassembling of TVland made for fascinating AND hilarious viewing. How often do I get to write that? (Clue: Only when I'm watching Screen Wipe). It showed us all just how much money goes into a TV show... from a 3 hour shoot for a 3 second segment of Brooker falling off a log to seeing how creative an edit can really be (topical!). Basically, Brooker has shown that you can (on the surface) hate TV, but really, a deep love of it can create great programming. [Mof Gimmers]