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“Black Mirror” is back for another round of mostly-worrying near-future dystopia.
Charlie Brooker’s darkly satirical anthology series — which began life in 2011 — is now onto its seventh season, all six episodes of which land on Netflix April 10.
Where the previous outing largely skipped the show’s tech-focused roots in favor of genres such as horror, this time it heads back towards it origins, featuring technological themes such as digitization, tiered-pricing and video gaming, but all told through its usual bleak — and sometimes bleakly comic — lens. Artificial intelligence, unsurprisingly, crops up several times.
But for the first time in the “Black Mirror” universe, there’s a sequel to a previous episode, the spaceship from Season 4 favorite “USS Callister” dusted off for another adventure in the digital realm, a return Brooker says was “long in the making” (but logistically difficult to arrange).
Alongside the Callister’s returning crewmates of Jesse Plemons and Cristin Milioti, the latest season is also awash in the sort of star-laden cast the show has become renowned for, including the likes of Paul Giamatti, Awkwafina, Harriet Walter, Issa Rae, Emma Corrin, Peter Capaldi, Rashida Jones, Chris O’Dowd and more.
Speaking to Variety ahead of the show’s launch, Brooker — alongside his executive producer Jessica Rhoades — discuss keeping a now-teenage “Black Mirror” fresh, how some new episodes “skew hopeful” but also deal major “body blows” and why, this time — despite appearances — he’s not biting the streaming hand that feeds him.
It’s been over a decade since you launched “Black Mirror“ and the name has almost become a genre in itself. While I expect that must be a huge compliment, how difficult has it become to keep the show feeling fresh and relevant?
Charlie Brooker: It’s a challenge. Obviously, we’ve got a back catalogue of stories we’ve done and ideas we’ve explored and you want to make sure that the show is always hopefully different and surprising. But at the same time, we’ve built up a sort of fan base. You’ve got a bunch of people coming to your gig wanting a particular thing, so it’s a difficult thing to supply. As time has gone on, we’ve extended what a Black Mirror episode is. We’ve done some that are hopeful and some that are sad and some that are bleak and some that are funny. And you get fans of the show who like very different episodes. So it’s kind of like being a band that does punk singles and power ballads and little acoustic numbers and spoken word beat poetry. All the stories represent different things that I like to do. What I’m saying is it’s a weird show.
We seem a long way from that first episode involving the prime minister and a pig. As you say, there are some uplifting and hopeful episodes. Has “Black Mirror” mellowed over the years? Are you less angry?
CB: Even if there are some episodes that skew hopeful by the end, usually it wanders down a dark alley at some point and sniffs the air. But have I become more hopeful? I don’t know if you’ve seen the news. Being hopeful is a challenge. But then you don’t want to constantly give people one flavor and one note, and you don’t want to always end on a massive body blow. Although I would say at least one episode this season has possibly one of the biggest body blows we’ve done. But it would get boring if it was all in that register. So sometimes we just try and make you cry and hopefully that’s sort of bittersweet. So whether that’s me mellowing or just wanting to mix up what I do … I don’t know, that’s for a psychologist to decide!
The episide “Common People,” without giving too much away, would appear — much like “Joan is Awful” in the last season — to be you taking another amusing pot-shot at your paymaster at Netflix. Is this the case? Did an ad pop up on your TV and you thought, right, here we go?
CB: Almost disappointingly, no. I’d like to be able to say we’re such rebels and we snuck this on. But no, it actually came about genuinely from various different angles. One was just listening to podcasts, observing how the posts naturally drift into sort of sales pitches. They have to do a sponsored bit and they almost do it without breaking their speech patterns. So there was a comic idea at the heart of that. Also I was thinking about this phrase from writer, Corey Doctorow, who coined this phrase ‘Inshitification,’ which is what happens to pretty much any service over time. It comes in, disrupts and then, over time as it has turn a profit, the experience gets worse for the users. But you can apply that to Facebook, to Uber … you name it. And even more broadly beyond that, I think there’s a general sense of everyone feeling kind of squeezed and having to take on side hustles all the time and just scrambling to survive. So I was kind of trying to channel all of that.
The episode “Eulogy” starring Paul Giamatti packs an emotional and thought-provoking punch. Do you find the ending optimistic at all?
Jessica Rhoades: It’s bittersweet. That one of the two very reflective episodes of the season. And so whether it’s Charlie sitting down to write using technology, or someone using a technological advance. I think being able to explore missed connections is an interesting way that the character is able to reflect on his life.
CB: There’s two episodes this season, “Hotel Reverie” and “Eulogy,” both of which come from various versions of ideas that have been floating around for a while. “Eulogy” was co-written with Ella Road so we were talking a lot about memory and how photographs are evocative and music is very evocative. I’d watched the “Get Back” documentary where they use technology to excavate the past, polish it up and present it to us in a new way and that was a really rich seam for ‘Black Mirror” to dig into. It’s just inherently emotional and evocative with things that have to do with pictures, old media, pictures, half-forgotten memories, captured in some way.
Of all the many episodes that you could have brought back for a sequel, why did you choose “USS Callister?”
CB: I thought, let’s go for the most expensive! But it was from the very beginning, when we finished the first one. A, it was just that I love those characters and the cast, but director Toby [Haynes] was keen from the start to do a follow up. And also, where the first one ended, it ended with them flying off into a new universe. But it’s been a long time in the making. We had a pandemic. And just getting everyone’s schedules to align was a puzzle.
JR: It’s an episode that always played in a specific genre, and if you pull in the string of that genre, it’s also a genre that welcomes sequels and the show’s characters to go on their next mission together. So it felt really natural.
Have you tried to do a sequel to an episode previously?
CB: No, actually. I weirdly have thought about it, since the prehistoric era of “Black Mirror.” We did an episode in season two called “White Bear” and at the time I though I had an idea for a sequel for this where it goes very “Memento”-like. So it’s something I’ve thought about. And certainly we’ve always hinted at things. We’ve brought back easter eggs. But certainly, there’s other episodes and worlds like I’d absolutely be up for revisiting. It always has to be the right story, and not just a pointless waste of the world’s fucking time.
Speaking of returnees, genius 1980s games designer Colin Ritman from “Bandersnatch“ is back for an episode of Season 7. I was speaking to my uncle, the games designer Jon Ritman the other day and he wanted to convey his thanks for honoring his work.
CB: Ha! Yes, his surname is definitely a little tribute to Jon. Because I’ll have seen his name on Spectrum loading screens for a good 15 minutes while the game was loading. We’re slightly channeling those interesting wizards of that early period. So is he aware?
Yes, he’s aware and he’s repeatedly made aware — and I’m sure with the return of Colin he’ll be made aware some more. But what was it about Jon, of all the various games designers of the 1980s, that made you want to take his — and my — surname?
CB: He wrote some brilliant games. And that name just stuck in my head. I must have been 11 or 12 years old when I was playing those games, and you’d spend hours in your room, and they’d take on a sort of mythic quality. So there were all these names, like Jon Ritman, Matthew Smith, Jeff Minter… they’d just go your head and stay in there. But I hope he’s flattered by the appropriation of his surname!
