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Charlie Brooker once made an excellent six-episode series entitled How TV Ruined Your Life. In it, he goes through the different ways that television, with its emotional manipulation, sneaky narratives, and deceptive advertising, has made a negative impact on the world, spreading fear and warping our sense of identity and community. In a way, it's almost a precursor to what would become his biggest success to date, Black Mirror, an equally critical and damning indictment of society, media, and technology.

Why did the former series fail and the latter succeed? Simple — storytelling. Brooker mastered the televisual medium with incredible stories in order to turn the show against the audience and society writ large with increasingly dire reflections of where the world is headed. That's where the title comes from after all, the dark screen of a television or phone, blank but reflective, showing you watching it in its black mirror.

Rachel Meaden Nov 27, 2016

It’s the penultimate episode of Yonderland series 3 and we’re finally getting some answers to what Cuddly Dick is getting up to…

This review contains spoilers.

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3.7 Miss Smashing

Yonderland does beauty pageants in episode 7 but something about it doesn’t feel quite right when all the rejected contestants start going missing…

This week sees the re-emergence of a Televised Beauty Contest Yonderland called Miss Smashing. Debbie thinks that something about the show smells a bit fishy and endeavours to get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile Negatus is a double agent working for Cuddly Dick once again and trying to decide if he should...

Charlie Brooker is one of those UK wonders who hasn't made the jump to American audiences yet, and that is a damn shame. Wildly prolific, Brooker seems to produce about 600 hours of new television every year, shows like "How TV Ruined Your LIfe" and "Them From That Thing" and "10 O'Clock Live" and "Newswipe" and "Screenwipe" and the oh-so-fiendish "Dead Set," and he's the author of the blisteringly funny "Pedophilia" episode of the great "Brass Eye."  Brooker is an astute media critic as well as a wicked wit, and that's a combination that I hoped would have made him much...

Channel 4's Big Fat Gypsy Weddings continued to impress last night, grabbing 8.2 million viewers. The documentary series about the lives of gypsies and travellers in Britain had an average of 7.48m (29.2%) from 9pm, picking up a further 710k on +1 (3.9%). The Cutting Edge programme outperformed new BBC One sci-fi drama Outcasts, which dropped to 3.32m (13%), a fall of 1.13m from the previous night's series premiere. Elsewhere, ITV1's Taggart earned 3.03m (11.8%) with a further 144k watching on +1 (0.8%), which was a 600K increase on last week's installment. Over on BBC Two, Justin Rowlatt's The Chinese Are Coming drew 1.34m (5.2%), while Charlie Brooker's How TV Ruined Your Life amused 1.04m (5.1%) at 10pm. Channel Five's CSI (more)...

Channel 4's Big Fat Gypsy Wedding continued to impress last night, grabbing 8.2 million viewers. The documentary series about the lives of gypsies and travellers in Britain had an average of 7.48m (29.2%) from 9pm, picking up a further 710k on +1 (3.9%). The Cutting Edge programme outperformed new BBC One sci-fi drama Outcasts, which dropped to 3.32m (13%), a fall of 1.13m from the previous night's series premiere. Elsewhere, ITV1's Taggart earned 3.03m (11.8%) with a further 144k watching on +1 (0.8%), which was a 600K increase on last week's installment. Over on BBC Two, Justin Rowlatt's The Chinese Are Coming drew 1.34m (5.2%), while Charlie Brooker's How TV Ruined Your Life amused 1.04m (5.1%) at 10pm. Channel Five's CSI (more)...

A Farmer's Life For Me | Do We Really Need The Moon? | How TV Ruined Your Life | Boardwalk Empire | World's Youngest Daredevils | Secret Diary Of A Call Girl

A Farmer's Life For Me

8pm, BBC2

Putting on a proper old grumpy face to prove this is a little more than just another reality TV show, Jimmy Doherty fronts a series in which nine towny couples compete for the chance to run a 25-acre Suffolk farm. The first challenge the hopefuls face is choosing one of nine small plots and working out how to make it pay, before embarking on initial work such as ploughing, putting up fencing and buying livestock. As Jimmy says, agriculture isn't just about living the good life, it's a business. Jw

Do We Really Need The Moon?

9pm, BBC2

Maybe not a question that you ponder every day, but for space scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, the answer is a resounding yes.