![]() ![]() And then I’ll be describing it to Annabel (Jones), my co-showrunner, and she’ll go, ’Oh, my God, that’s horrible!’ And then, to appall her even more, I will embellish it. “Usually,” he confides, “the broad idea is something that makes me laugh on some level. But luckily, I don’t have to work out how the wiring works. Then we work out some technological means of allowing it to happen. “But because we’re sort of dreaming out loud onto the page, we can start with a ’what-if’ idea and identify the human story at the heart of it. ![]() He acknowledges it’s hard to stay ahead of the curve. It’s really down to the viewer what they take away.”Īnother half-dozen episodes are in the works for release in a year or so, and beyond that, “as long as we have ideas, and people want to watch, we’ll carry on,” he promises. “Hopefully the show isn’t wagging a finger at you. In Brooker’s mind, Black Mirror treats technology as if it were a drug whose side effects- some benign, some dire - are being analyzed. ![]() It saddens me when people think this show is written by an angry old man who’s furious at pixels.” “It’s just facilitating some weakness in our character. “Usually, the technology isn’t to blame in the stories,” he adds. I love all that stuff! Writing the episodes, I’ll pace myself: ‘When I get to the end of this scene, I can go on my PlayStation a bit.’ He is rumpled, affable and animated as he corrects the record: “You COULDN’T do this show if you weren’t interested in technology. That said, Brooker would like to straighten out a common misconception: “There are people who say this is ‘the anti-technology show.’ That really makes me cross!” Brooker realizes that, unlike in the not-so-distant past, technology today is seldom found to be thrilling but rather, at its best, “cool.” This guarantees that, when it bursts on the scene in a Black Mirror yarn, its effect is all the more disturbing. Decades later, as Brooker set about framing his new series, he asked himself, “What’s the big thing worrying people now?” To him, the answer seemed obvious: the disruptive effects of ever-mounting technology.Įpisodes of the show he comes up with typically unfold in an oblique, contemplative fashion, reflecting a modern age when technology, notwithstanding each breakthrough, is largely taken for granted. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Brooker’s starting point for Black Mirror was his childhood obsession with America’s The Twilight Zone, with its socially progressive parables, twist-y endings and shivers delivered down the viewer’s spine.Īiring in the early 1960s, it drew inspiration from timely touch points: the Bomb outer space racism and the Red scare. “It must be something like that.”īrooker, 45, is an English media critic, satirist, TV personality and screenwriter whose piercing contributions to Brit cultural life may have been a bit too U.K.-centric to have made the leap to American shores. How to further explain the essence of Black Mirror? Ask Charlie Brooker, its creator, co-producer and the writer of most of its episodes. A few may put you off.īut it’s fair to say that all come loaded with a potent “Uh-oh!” payoff. Most are shot through with a streak of mordant humour. Some episodes are grim, some perversely playful. “Shut Up and Dance” exposes a teenage boy who, after his computer is hacked, will do anything to keep his private life private.īlack Mirror is set in the present, or in an all-too-plausible near-future, with tales that are, by turns, descriptive or cautionary or devilishly speculative. “Nosedive” takes social-media “likes” to the nth degree of crazed approval-seeking. “Men Against Fire” chillingly confronts prejudice on the battle front. Netflix has just released six new episodes that supplement seven previous hours created for British television.Īmong the new crop, “Hated in the Nation” unveils what is literally a killer app that lets people choose the day’s most disliked individual- who will then be put to death. The anthology series Black Mirror takes you through a high-tech looking glass with jittery tales sure to lodge in your brain for years to come, as it reclaims the hallowed realm of The Twilight Zone for a new millennium. The fateful misinterpretation of the phrase “to serve man.” Even after a half-century, these memes can still deliver a jolt of recognition.īut if you’re drawing a blank instead, that’s OK. NEW YORK - William Shatner’s bumpy flight. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |