Charlton Brooker (born 3 March 1971) is an English screenwriter, producer, presenter, author, cartoonist, and social critic. He first became known for creating and presenting satirical television shows that featured criticism of modern society and the media, such as Screenwipe, Gameswipe, Newswipe, and Weekly Wipe.
Brooker came to wider prominence as the creator, writer, and executive producer of the dystopian anthology series Black Mirror. His other work includes writing for comedy series such as Brass Eye, Cunk on Earth, The 11 O'Clock Show, and Nathan Barley, creating the horror drama series Dead Set, writing social criticism pieces for The Guardian, co-founding and designing the logo for second-hand retailer CeX, and serving as a creative director for the production company Zeppotron.
Charlton Brooker was born on 3 March 1971 in Reading, Berkshire. He grew up in a "relaxed" Quaker household in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Oxfordshire. His parents, who were fans of the sitcom Bewitched, named him Charlton after a character featured in one episode and his sister Samantha after the show's main character. As a teenager, he first worked as a writer and cartoonist for Oink!
After attending Wallingford School, Brooker attended the University of Westminster (known as the Polytechnic of Central London until his final year there) to study for a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies; he later revealed that he did not graduate because he wrote his dissertation on video games, considered an unacceptable topic for a dissertation. He has listed his comedic influences as Monty Python, The Young Ones, Blackadder, Chris Morris, and Vic Reeves.
Brooker did some early work as a cartoonist and worked in the video game department of Music and Video Exchange, a retailer in Notting Hill Gate. He and some other employees left to co-found the second-hand retailer CeX. Brooker worked in their first shop and produced cartoon advertisements, and designed their logo.
After some of Brooker's CeX cartoons were printed in the magazine PC Zone, he was invited to write for the magazine. His early reviews included System Shock (1994) and Fallout (1997). Brooker wrote for the magazine throughout the mid- to late-1990s. Aside from games reviews, his output included the comic strip "Cybertwats" and a column titled "Sick Notes", where Brooker would insult anyone who wrote in to the magazine – and offered a £50 prize to the best letter.
One of Brooker's one-shot cartoons caused the magazine to be pulled from the shelves of many British newsagents. The cartoon was titled "Helmut Werstler's Cruelty Zoo" and professed to be an advert for a theme park created by a Teutonic psychologist for children to take out their violent impulses on animals rather than humans. It was accompanied by photoshopped pictures of children smashing the skulls of monkeys with hammers, jumping on a badger with a pitchfork, and chainsawing an orang-utan, among other things. The original joke was supposed to be at the expense of the Tomb Raider games, known at the time for the number of animals killed, but the original title, "Lara Croft's Cruelty Zoo", was changed for legal reasons. In October 2008, Brooker and several other ex-writers were invited back to review a game for the 200th issue. Brooker reviewed Euro Truck Simulator.
Brooker began writing a TV review column titled "Screen Burn" for The Guardian newspaper's Saturday entertainment supplement The Guide in 2000, a role he continued until October 2010.
On 24 October 2004, he wrote a column on George W. Bush and the forthcoming 2004 US presidential election which concluded, "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. – where are you now that we need you?" that was criticised for Brooker's apparent encouragement of the assassination of the American president. The Guardian withdrew the article from its website and published and endorsed an apology by Brooker. He has since commented about the remark in the column stating: I ended a Screen Burn column by recycling a very old tasteless joke (a variant of a graffiti I first saw during the Thatcher years), and within minutes half the internet seemed convinced The Guardian was officially calling for assassination. My inbox overflowed with blood-curdling death threats, and it was all very unfunny indeed – a bit like recounting a rude joke at a dinner party, only to be told you hadn't recounted a joke at all, but molested the host's children, and suddenly everyone was punching you and you weren't going to get any pudding. I've had better weekends.
Brooker left the "Screen Burn" column in 2010. In the final column, he noted how increasingly difficult he found it to reconcile his role in mainstream media and TV production with his writing as a scabrous critic or to objectively criticise those he increasingly worked and socialised with. Longtime covering contributor Grace Dent took over the column. He continued to contribute other articles to The Guardian on a regular basis, his most recent comment column appearing in May 2015.
In 2012, he contributed to the book Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who.
In 2014, an article he wrote for The Guardian—"Too much talk for one planet: why I'm reducing my word emissions"—was published in the A-Level anthology Voices in Speech and Writing: An Anthology.
From 1999 to 2003, Brooker wrote the satirical TVGoHome website, a regular series of mock TV schedules published in a format similar to that of the Radio Times, consisting of a combination of savage satire and surreal humour and featured in technology newsletter Need To Know. A print adaptation of the site was published by Fourth Estate in 2001. A TV sketch show based on the site was broadcast on UK digital station E4 the same year.
In May 2012, Brooker was interviewed for Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast series. In 2019, he made a second appearance on the podcast, which was released during March 2020.
Brooker's television presenting debut was with Gia Milinovich on BBC Knowledge's The Kit (1999–2000), a programme that reviewed gadgets and technology. From 1999 to 2000, Brooker played the hooded expert 'the Pundit' in the short-lived show Games Republic, hosted by Trevor and Simon on BSkyB.
In 2000, Brooker was one of the writers of the Channel 4 show The 11 O'Clock Show. In 2001, he was one of several writers on "Paedogeddon", Channel 4's Brass Eye special on the subject of paedophilia. In 2003, Brooker wrote an episode entitled "How to Watch Television" for Channel 4's The Art Show. The episode was presented in the style of a public information film and was partly animated.
Together with Brass Eye's Chris Morris, Brooker co-wrote the sitcom Nathan Barley, based on a character from one of TVGoHome's fictional programmes. The show was broadcast in 2005 and focused on the lives of a group of London media 'trendies'. The same year, he was also on the writing team of the Channel 4 sketch show Spoons, produced by Zeppotron.