Over the New Year holidays, Netflix gifted subscribers with the latest season of Black Mirror, the popular sci-fi anthology series well-known for its shocking plot twists, macabre subject-matter and dystopian look on how technology could impact our lives.
From an insurance claim agent who uses a machine that can extract memories, a mother who relies on a tracking device that allows her to see what her teenage daughter is seeing, the new season of Black Mirror invites binge-watching (which many reportedly did) by presenting its futuristic imagination with the mundane situations of daily life: what's shocking about the show is not its dark dreams about machines and devilish internet, but how human impulses and behaviour are affected by advancement in science.
Writer and executive producer Charlie Brooker and co-executive producer Annabel Jones spoke to fans about the show's eerie resemblance to current events in the real world, as well as the changes in the new season, which promises to be its most playful and horrible.
Technology is a big part of the series, though it is often viewed with a less-than optimistic view.
Brooker: Yeah, this show would be a terrible job to do if you hated technology, as so much of it is designing these technologies. If anything, we should probably be billing Apple and Google and Facebook for giving them so many ideas on new tech products. About five minutes after an episode of Black Mirror airs, somebody launches a product that is eerily similar to the technology in the episode.
And yet, technology is usually not the villain in this show. Like all tools, technology is neutral, and it is always some sort of human weakness that causes the technology to be used in a harmful way.
Jones: We're very critical, in that when we set up these worlds you have to have accepted that technology in your life. It must be seductive or of use to you, because otherwise the world doesn't feel credible. So in every world we've set up, you have to understand the appeal and understand why you'd use that technology and then we begin to sort of explore what could go wrong.
Rosemarie Dewitt in an episode of Black Mirror, directed by Jodie Foster. Christos Kalohoridis
Tell us about this season: What's happening in it?
Brooker: Black Mirror is a tricky show to promote in many ways, as there aren't any returning characters from previous seasons or overarching plot threads to follow, so you can't really say 'oh, I'll tell you what Jon Snow's up to now', there's none of that here. And the audience also don't really want to know as well.
But what we can say is that we have delivered more varied genres. We're tackling different worlds than we have before. It's certainly more ambitious.
Jones: One of the things about doing an anthology series is that you can create something big and on an international scale, and then scale way back to create something more akin to indie movies, as we have done before. The new episodes are certainly more new, they're telling new stories and talking about new things. There's lots of adaptability there. When you turn on a Black Mirror episode, you really have no idea what's going to happen at all. And there's certainly an allure in that not knowing.
Brooker: We've slightly tweaked the tone a little this season as well. Occasionally this season we've got a little more playful in certain parts, as looking at the world right now, it's like one long Black Mirror episode going on all year. And I thought how much nihilistic bleakness can we all take? So I decided to make it a little more playful this time around, though we still haven't skimped on that core of darkness. So to be short, this season will see some of the more playful stories we've done, as well as some of the most horrible as well.
Black Mirror episode USS Callister. Jonathan Prime / Netflix
What are some of the films or TV shows that inspired Black Mirror?
Brooker: There's obviously Twilight Zone, which ran very sporadically and very late at night in the UK. Hammer House Of Horror, that's another one, and the BBC used to put on these wonderful one-off plays, which we felt was something that was really missing when we were coming up with the idea of Black Mirror. The trend in TV is very much focused on long, seven-season series about the lives of troubled men, which I loved, but it felt like there wasn't really a place for these full-meal TV shows, where you got a full-meal from each episode instead of a season-long arc.
Black Mirror has changed quite a bit since it first aired in 2011, including the acquisition by Netflix in the show's third season. How have the changes affected Black Mirror?
Brooker: With Black Mirror, each episode is so different, which is a challenge in itself. We're also always trying to surprise the viewers, so each one tends to have their own challenges or succeeding in different ways. It's a really weird show since everyone has their own favourite episode or definition of what the series is supposed to be.
Jones: That's one of the nice things about being on Netflix, as Black Mirror is very much a word-of-mouth show. People can browse for the specific episode to show their friends or create a playlist of their favourites, which I think has been a great boon to the show.
