Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe
Brooker takes a week off from putting the boot into TV inanity to interview five top TV writers—the writers of shows like Doctor Who, Shameless, Hustle, The IT Crowd and Peep Show—about writing. How they got into it, how they get going in the morning, how they come up with characters and names and so on.
Brooker’s respectful—even humble—with the writers and, in turn, they’re frank and disarmingly modest about the process: about the endless cups of tea and the fear and the drudgery of the first draft but also about the elation of seeing the finished product and the compulsion to write.
It’s really inspiring TV and, for anyone who’s ever attempted to write anything (and that’s, like, everyone now, right?), it’s really encouraging and of genuine practical use. I know for certain that professors of creative writing everywhere will be pirating this wholesale so they can put the video on and nip out for a smoke without feeling guilty. Absolutely superb TV.
As ever a great show from Charlie Brooker. Completely different from the normal show but captivating in the candid manner that those interviewed spoke.
DW x
Thanks for that, it was very entertaining. Nice mixture of different personalities that Brooker interviewed.
Two things I loved:
1. Tony Jordan. What a legend.
2. All the stuff about procrastination and letting ideas brew (loved Linehan’s analogy of doing a poo) – very reassuring for those of us who pathologically work that way.
as ever the BBC have removed this clip from their archive (well done chaps at BBC!), but those nice people at youtube still have the clips available. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLdHWng-3v8