Worst. Year. Ever.
Charlie Brooker’s annual Wipe review of the year shows used to be essential viewing over the festive period. Sadly though, there has not been a new one since 2016, as Charlie Brooker is now an international superstar and too busy to do it.
But if there was ever a year that needed Brooker’s trademark scorn, it was 2020. And we might be getting something similar from him this year, courtesy of Netflix, and rather unexpectedly, Hugh Grant.
The Love Actually actor was being interviewed by Vulture about his new HBO miniseries The Undoing, when he let slip that he was working with Brooker.
“I’m doing a thing tomorrow, actually. Charlie Brooker has written a mockumentary about 2020. It’s for Netflix, and I am a historian who’s being interviewed about the year,” Grant explained. “I’m pretty repellent, actually! And you’ll like my wig.”
Nothing else has been confirmed. We don’t know when we’ll get to see it. You would think that it is that sort of thing that would stream at the end of December, when ‘review of the year’ shows typically do.
Black Mirror season four and the Bandersnatch interactive special were both launched in late December (in 2017 and 2018, respectively), so it has almost become a tradition for Netflix to drop some new Charlie Brooker content in the limbo between Christmas and New Year.
Brooker’s Wipe shows began with Screenwipe, which ran for five series on BBC Four between 2006 and 2008, reviewing and explaining TV of the era.
That was then spun off into Newswipe, Weekly Wipe, and a one-off edition of Gameswipe. The end of year shows began in 2009 with the aptly titled 2009 Wipe and continued all the way through to 2016.
Brooker has since been too busy with writing Black Mirror to continue with the tradition, but in the midst of the first UK lockdown, he did return to BBC Two in May 2020 for Antiviral Wipe, looking at the Covid pandemic.
