Charlie Brooker's Antiviral Wipe review – urgent, exasperated perfection
Charlie Brooker provided some much-needed light relief during the coronavirus pandemic with his special Antiviral Wipe, and fans want more.
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Brooker is never better than when at home, shouting at the TV, so perhaps it’s little wonder the lockdown finds him on his best-ever form
uch of our time is spent looking forward now. It is necessary: what’s next, how do we get there, when will this be over? The fact that Charlie Brooker’s Antiviral Wipe (BBC Two) gives us a moment to stop and look back at the sheer insanity of the past few months – much of it now appearing to have been horribly preventable
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, in the UK at least – is an oddly exhilarating experience. Was that really the beginning of March, when the prime minister waffled on about how he had been “shaking hands continuously”? In hospitals? Full of patients with the coronavirus? I hadn’t rewatched the footage of it until now. The mind continues to boggle.
Antiviral Wipe is here to clear away the fog. In its various iterations, the Wipe, as we might gruesomely call it, hasn’t been seen since 2016’s end-of-year Annual Wipe, and it has been much missed. Brooker is never more comfortable than when expressing incredulity at the ridiculousness of people, himself included
, and of course this turns out to be the perfect time for it. Any worry that the news might be beyond satire, that the situation is simply too dire for anyone to mine it for humour, is quickly dispensed with. I suspect I might never see Matt Hancock again without thinking of him as “your sister’s first
Can the Wipe series come back for the remainder
boyfriend with a car”, or Chris Whitty as “Tintin prematurely aged after watching his dog drown”.
In fact, having guffawed my way through most of this, I realised that this is probably the first time since lockdown that I’ve allowed myself to really let go and laugh at it. Even Brooker, towards the end, puts on his “earnest hat”
(a hat with the word “earnest” taped to the front of it) to emphasise that we are dealing with “tragedy upon tragedy”, but the fact that the official response to it lends itself so well to satire says far more than if the jokes were hard to come by. “Obviously, this is a worrying time for all of us but it’s important to laugh,” says Brooker, with a maniacal flourish.
The chronological approach is as illuminating as it is infuriating, and is a reminder that time has been bent out of shape. The panic-buying that defined the early stages of the pandemic feels as if it happened several lifetimes ago
Charlie Brooker takes savage swipe at Matt Hancock with 'Peter Pandemic' jibe
. The PM daring to insist that the NHS was well-prepared in terms of PPE is like coming across an ancient scrap of papyrus. It’s certainly hard to watch Your Sister’s First Boyfriend With A Car say “the risk to the public remains low” without wanting to do something bad to the TV screen.
Having lost myself in a few Facebook comment wormholes, this kind of humour won’t suit everyone – the bashing of Boris’ £350m NHS fun bus, on a BBC show, will doubtless inflame those who insist that the corporation is run by
“lefty southern twats” – but Antiviral Wipe succeeds because it lacks the smugness that can weigh down politically leaning comedy, on either side of the spectrum. For every witty line about current affairs, there are several more jokes about bums.
Brooker sits behind a desk made
Barry Shitpeas and Philomena Cunk are back and on top form, with the latter at times running the risk of sounding a lot more sensible than certain world leaders. The suggestion of “vaccine biscuits” is tragically more practical than, ooh, I don’t know,
ingesting household cleaning products. Cunk’s interview with Prof Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, is the best she has done in ages, because he strikes the perfect balance, by taking her just seriously enough, even as she’s squirting whipped cream into her mouth.
While many TV shows have gamely ploughed on during the lockdown, they have all emerged with a scrappy, DIY feel, a sense of having made the best of limited resources. Brooker even talks about that here, amid surreal scenes of presenters socially distancing on a single sofa, or broadcasting
enthusiastically to an auditorium full of empty seats. But Brooker’s shtick is never more at home than
Brooker sits behind a desk made
when he’s, well, at home. He ropes in his wife, Konnie Huq, for a couple of guest appearances that make full use of her time as a Blue Peter presenter (“She can make the most of any old shit, which is why she married me”) and his children pop up during a bit about conference calls. Even though
Brooker sits behind a desk made out of a cardboard box, it’s probably the show most suited to be made under the restrictions.
As a one-off, Antiviral Wipe packs its most effective punch. It feels urgent and necessary, even as it despairs. Plus, it provides some much-needed catharsis by simply allowing the absolute topsy-turvy carnage of the world be funny, even if it’s just for 45 minutes.
