Good news
This week’s edition of Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe is an extended 50-minute long US edition.

Bad news
As a result, it starts at 10pm and clashes with Time Trumpet on BBC Two. I know in these days of PDRs and the like we’re not supposed to care about such things. “Bah,” I say.

Watching Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe on BBC Four last night, I was reassured that my DVD collection isn’t as unfashionable as I thought: Brooker praised Columbo, possibly the least hip box sets I own. He also rightly recommended Monk, a marvellously amusing (if not too intellectually taxing on the Whodunnit scale) US series about an obsessive-compulsive detective.

But the highlight of this week’s Screen Wipe for me was his description of Elizabeth Estensen off of Emmerdale Farm (call it by its name) as

“Elizabeth Estensen from The Liver Birds and T-Bag.”

There is no logic to it; it just pleased me.

Armando Iannucci’s Time Trumpet was, as Alex says, a bit hit and miss, but the Doctor is worth the monsters hits were worth the misses and the combined average was well above par.* My favourite bit (as picked out too by Paul Evans in Alex’s comments box) was Stewart Lee’s line

What is more disgusting, a girl singing with her guts hanging out and her intestines slung over her shoulder… or the institution of the monarchy?

Roll on next Thursday.

*”Above par” is in golf, of course, a bad thing, but here I’m using it to mean a good thing.

Pondering what to put on the box this evening? Tired of soaps? Fear not – there’s plenty of good stuff on tonight, mostly on BBC’s Two and Four.

19:10-20:00
BBC Four: The Avengers (episode “A Surfeit of H2O”)
I expect Alex will fill you in on the detail (et voilà), but look out for Talfryn Thomas (Mr Cheeseman from Dad’s Army) and Geoffrey “Slam in the lamb” Palmer.

20:00-21:00
BBC Two: Dragon’s Den
New series with a couple of new dragons.

21:00-22:00
I’ll probably put a DVD on for this hour, but there’s plenty to keep you entertained: Extras on BBC Two, The League of Gentlemen followed by the first half of Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns on BBC Four, The Two Ronnies on ITV3 or, if you like that sort of thing, Bad Girls on the ratings disaster that is ITV1.

22:00-22:30
BBC Two: Time Trumpet
Armando Iannucci‘s new comedy series, a kind of “I Love the 2000s” from the future. (Watch a preview.)

22:30-23:00
BBC Four: Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe
Ascerbic columnist and comedy writer Charlie Brooker says funny stuff about TV.

There you go. Who needs the Radio Times…?