Charlie Brooker facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Charlie Brooker
Brooker in 2017
Born	Charlton Brooker (1971-03-03) 3 March 1971 (age 54) Reading, Berkshire, England
Education	University of Westminster
Occupation	Presenter, author, screenwriter, cartoonist, producer, social critic
Years active	1987–present
Spouse(s)	Konnie Huq ​ (m. 2010)​
Children	2

Charlton Brooker (born 3 March 1971) is an English writer, TV presenter, and producer. He is famous for creating, writing, and producing the science fiction show Black Mirror. He has also written for comedy shows like Brass Eye and The 11 O'Clock Show.

Charlie Brooker started his career drawing cartoons. He made ads for a video game store called CeX. Later, he became a journalist for PC Zone magazine. He has hosted many TV shows where he often gives strong opinions about modern society and media. Some of these shows include Screenwipe, Gameswipe, and Newswipe. He also wrote the horror show Dead Set in 2008. He used to write articles about society for The Guardian newspaper.

Early Life and School

Charlie Brooker was born on 3 March 1971, in Reading, England. He grew up in a relaxed Quaker home in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Oxfordshire. His parents loved the TV show Bewitched. They named him Charlton after a character and his sister Samantha after the main character.

As a teenager, Charlie first worked as a writer and cartoonist for Oink!, a comic from the late 1980s. After attending Wallingford School, he studied Media Studies at the Polytechnic of Central London. This school later became the University of Westminster. He says he didn't finish his degree because his main project was about video games, which wasn't accepted at the time. He has said that comedians like Monty Python and shows like The Young Ones inspired his comedy.

Before his writing career took off, Brooker worked as a cartoonist. He also worked in the video game section of a store called Music and Video Exchange. When a co-worker started the second-hand store CeX, Charlie worked in their first shop and drew cartoon advertisements for them.

Career Highlights

Writing for Print

Some of Charlie Brooker's cartoons for CeX were printed in PC Zone magazine. This led to him being invited to write for the magazine. He wrote game reviews for games like System Shock (1994) and Fallout (1997). He wrote for PC Zone throughout the 1990s. He also created a comic strip called "Cybertwats." In 2008, he was asked to review a game for the magazine's 200th issue. He reviewed Euro Truck Simulator.

In 2000, Brooker started writing a TV review column called "Screen Burn" for The Guardian newspaper. He continued this until 2010. From 2005, he also wrote a column called "Supposing" for The Guardian. In this column, he would write about "what if" ideas. He also created "Ignopedia," a funny series of fake articles. Unlike Wikipedia, which is written by many people, Ignopedia was written by one person who didn't know many facts.

Charlie left the "Screen Burn" column in 2010. He felt it was hard to criticize TV when he was also working in the TV industry and meeting the people he wrote about. He still wrote other articles for The Guardian until 2015. In 2014, an article he wrote was even included in a school textbook for older students.

Online Work

From 1999 to 2003, Charlie Brooker wrote for a funny website called TVGoHome. This site showed fake TV schedules, similar to a TV guide. It was full of sharp jokes and silly humor. A book based on the website was published in 2001. A TV sketch show based on the site also aired on the E4 channel.

Television Shows

Brooker in 2011

Charlie Brooker first appeared on TV in a show called The Kit (1999–2000) on BBC Knowledge. This show reviewed gadgets and technology. He also played a character called 'the Pundit' in the show Games Republic (1999–2000).

In 2000, Brooker was one of the writers for the Channel 4 show The 11 O'Clock Show. In 2003, he wrote an episode for Channel 4's The Art Show called "How to Watch Television." This episode was like an old public information film and had animated parts.

Charlie also co-wrote the comedy show Nathan Barley with Chris Morris. This show was about trendy media people in London and aired in 2005. In the same year, he also wrote for the sketch show Spoons.

Wipe Series

In 2006, Brooker started writing and presenting Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe on BBC Four. This show reviewed TV in a similar way to his "Screen Burn" newspaper columns. The show became very popular and had many series and special episodes.

Screenwipe episodes often focused on different themes, like American TV, news, advertising, or children's shows. In one episode about children's shows, Charlie even joined the cast of Toonattik for a week, playing an "Angry News Guy." Another episode looked at how TV shows are written, with interviews from famous British writers.

Newswipe with Charlie Brooker started in 2009. This show was similar to Screenwipe but focused on how international news is reported. He also wrote and presented Gameswipe in 2009, which was all about video games.

His end-of-year specials, like 2010 Wipe, reviewed the past year. These specials continued every year until 2016. They stopped because Charlie became very busy with Black Mirror and other projects.

Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe started in 2013 on BBC Two. It combined ideas from Screenwipe and Newswipe, covering recent news, TV shows, and films. It also featured guests who talked about current events. A special episode called Election Wipe aired in 2015, focusing on the UK general election.

In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Charlie made a special called Charlie Brooker's Antiviral Wipe. It was about life during the lockdown. He often ends his shows by saying, "Thank you for watching. Now go away."

Dead Set

Charlie Brooker wrote Dead Set, a five-part zombie horror show for E4. It was set inside the Big Brother house. The show aired in October 2008 around Halloween.

Brooker said that Dead Set was very different from his usual comedy work. He wanted it to surprise, entertain, and shock people. He had always been a fan of horror films. The show starred Jaime Winstone and even featured Big Brother presenter Davina McCall playing herself. Dead Set was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Drama Series.

Black Mirror

In December 2011, three episodes of Charlie Brooker's show Black Mirror aired on Channel 4. This show is a science fiction series where each episode tells a different story. It received very good reviews. Charlie created the show, wrote the first episode, and co-wrote the second with his wife, Konnie Huq. He also wrote all three episodes of the second series.

In 2015, Netflix ordered a third season of 12 episodes, and Channel 4 no longer had the rights to the show. The third season was released worldwide on Netflix in October 2016. Charlie wrote four of these episodes himself and co-wrote two others. The fourth season came out in December 2017. Then, an interactive film called Bandersnatch was released in December 2018, where viewers could choose what happened in the story. The fifth season followed in June 2019.

Charlie Brooker explained that each episode of Black Mirror has different characters and settings. But they are all about how we live now, and how we might live in the near future if we're not careful. The show often explores worries about technology and modern society. For example, some news reports compared the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign to an episode of Black Mirror called "The Waldo Moment." Charlie Brooker himself later agreed with this comparison.

Other TV Work

Charlie Brooker co-wrote a funny detective show for Sky1 called A Touch of Cloth. It first aired in 2012 and starred John Hannah and Suranne Jones.

He has also appeared on several popular TV shows, including the news quiz Have I Got News for You, 8 Out of 10 Cats, and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2009.

In 2009, Brooker started hosting You Have Been Watching, a comedy quiz show on Channel 4 that discussed television. He was also a co-host for Channel 4's alternative election night in 2010, along with David Mitchell and Jimmy Carr. This led to a spin-off show called 10 O'Clock Live, which started in 2011.

In 2011, Charlie hosted How TV Ruined Your Life on BBC Two. In 2020, he created a mockumentary (a fake documentary) for Netflix called Death to 2020, which looked back at the year 2020. In 2022, he was the creator of an animated interactive show called Cat Burglar.

Radio Shows

From 2010 to 2012, Charlie Brooker hosted a BBC Radio 4 show called So Wrong It's Right. In this show, guests would try to come up with the worst possible ideas or the "most wrong" answers to questions. He was also a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in 2018.

Personal Life

Charlie Brooker is married to Konnie Huq, a former presenter of the children's show Blue Peter. They met while filming an episode of Screenwipe. They got engaged after dating for nine months and married on 26 July 2010, in Las Vegas, Nevada. They have two sons. Konnie's sister, Rupa Huq, is a Member of Parliament in the UK.

Charlie Brooker is an atheist, meaning he does not believe in God. He also has a background in the Quaker religion due to his family.

Awards and Recognitions

Charlie Brooker has won many awards for his work, especially for Black Mirror. He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Television Movie and two for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special for Black Mirror.

In 2009, he won the Columnist of the Year award at the British Press Awards for his column in The Guardian. His show Dead Set was nominated for a BAFTA award in 2009. In 2010, he received the Best Entertainment Programme Award for Newswipe from the Royal Television Society. He has also won three British Comedy Awards. In 2017, his show Charlie Brooker's 2016 Wipe won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Comedy and Comedy Entertainment Programme.

Filmography

Images for kids

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  Brooker in 2017

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  Brooker in 2011

See also

In Spanish: Charlie Brooker para niños