Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe

I like Charlie Brooker, I like Dara O'Briain and I like Graham Linehan. If those three can't persuade me to take an interest in computer games, nobody can. All three contributed to Gameswipe, a helpful guide to the computer game, with Brooker as host.

Brooker was his usual grumpy, caustic, brilliant self, but the subject matter just left me cold. The show helpfully introduced the uninitiated to the various categories of game available - platform, shoot 'em up, role play, combat - and provided a brief history of each. By far the best bits featured archive clips of anxious teachers, concerned parents and fretful community leaders getting all hot under the collar at the latest screen outrage, of which there have been many over the years.

But even with sumptuously realised and immaculately detailed graphics, the games under review appeared infantile and repetitive. Especially the modern shoot 'em ups, which have somehow contrived to make the act of mass murder appear very dull indeed.

Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe gives videogames good name

Television's relationship with videogames has been bumpy over the last 20 years, but Charlie Brooker's new show might herald a happier future.

Most children I know would have been in deep mourning for their video games, the very first of which was demonstrated in footage from a Yuletide Tomorrow's World in which the old-school presenter Raymond Baxter played tele-tennis from his sofa with a non-speaking woman who may have been his wife, daughter, housekeeper or secretary (darker theories still crawl around my head). The same clip was shown on Gameswipe with Charlie Brooker, a blissfully archive-heavy history of computer games in which Brooker attempted to marshal a defence of them. The trouble is that if Tony Blair as a Prime Minister had no reverse gear, Brooker as a critic has no praise mode and the more he talked the more hellishly pointless the games seemed. As always with Brooker, however, the documentary contained more original ideas in 50 minutes than most of us have in a career.

TV Review: Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe

Aside from the serious(ish) stuff, it was great just to see Brooker talking about games that have been forgotten and for a gaming geek like me, it was wonderful to see the segment from the Consolvania crew talking about the wild array of utterly mental games you could get on the ZX Spectrum.

Following in the footsteps of Screenwipe, Charlie Brooker's new show - you guessed it - aims its remote at the world of videogames. Whether you're a gamer hater or lover, Gameswipe - part of the Electric Revolution season on BBC4 - shows how games can be just as dumb or brilliant as TV and movies. And Charlie certainly knows what he's talking about, having spent his early career causing mayhem at PC Zone. Graham Linehan, Dara O'Briain and Dom Joly are on hand to join in the pixellated fun.

tvBite is increasingly uncertain about the cult of Brooker. It's fair enough when he's writing things like this; there seems to be no way to disagree with him. But when he's awkwardly presenting average TV shows, the same fans seem to be unwilling to notice that a lot of what he does is a bit rubbish. No previews were available for this and his big shoebox face seems to have been digitally remastered so it might be good. If you're interested in computer games. And one of his legion of fans.

Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe

Tonight's an exciting night to be a fan of videogames as, at long last, Charlie Brooker will be giving the Screenwipe treatment to the oft-maligned (yet incredibly lucrative) form of electronic entertainment in Gameswipe.

The computer games show comeback

Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe could mark the return of the computer games show to mainstream TV. Hands up who misses GamesMaster?