TV Go Home [Paperback]

An early taste of Charlie Brooker's splenetic fury can be found in this very funny and long overdue volume. It has some astonishing bile and the jagged humour is infectious. It's an ideal book to browse through, as most of it is amusing (and some of it highly inventive), and the depravity of some of the images is striking.

One small criticism is that I don't think the layout did it full justice, but the content is superb.

Sherlock Holmes and the Flying Zombie Death Monkeys

After seeing this book I wanted it - but it was out of print and my meagre wage wouldn't stretch to upwards of £50 (as it was on some websites). Although an online archive existed, it wasn't quite the same - but thankfully it has been reprinted and will now become part of my collection ...finally!

'TV Go Home' is a parody of the TV listing magazines which tend to live under the settee and is the creation of acclaimed Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker. Brooker is renowned for his dry and often caustic attacks on modern day media, his diatribes are fairly aimed though and this publication allows you to enjoy his whimsical take on the TV programming schedule. The familiar format of the listings make the edgy contents even more humorous, though it's a sad reflection on actual television that his fictional series sometimes seem as though they could actually be aired these days.

The entries consist of both unique ideas and running jokes - my favourite continuing series has to be 'Mick Hucknall's Pink Pancakes', if I ever catch mention of him these days I can't help but stifle a giggle as I imagine him squidging his spuds against a transparent surface. The magazine also introduces a program simply called 'C**t' which mocks the trendy media-types for whom style is everything and substance just gets in the way. The main protagonist (or c**t I suppose) is Nathan Barley and this fictional TV programme eventually became an actual one co-written with Chris Morris. Nathan Barley is one of the best comedies to fail to register on the radar of most TV Viewers (along with Sean Lock's equally fantastic 15 Storeys High) and the concept is typical of the many things you'll see in TV Go Home.

Brooker often uses vulgar language here, but it's not brainless swearing - his swipes are finely targeted and his words express what many of us feel about modern culture. He manages, often with just a program name and synopsis, to dissect the weaknesses of the celebrity obsessed age, this isn't just a funny book - it has something to say.

In a nutshell: TV Go Home shows is genuinely very funny and is crammed full of intelligent ideas which exist unfiltered in short paragraphs. It allows us to laugh at the worse aspects of television, and also stands as a strange warning of how things seem to be going! A series of clever rants disguised at potty-mouthed low brow humour.

Excellent book, very funny.

Excerpts from the cult TV Go Home website. I love Charlie Brookers wit and humour. I would highly recommend this book.