Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker responds to claim series ‘lost British charm’

Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker has hit back against online criticism of the show losing its gritty British nature ahead of season seven.

The long-running acclaimed dystopia originated on Channel 4 in 2011 as a ‘contemporary British re-working of the Twilight Zone’ and was acquired by Netflix in 2016 where it has since aired four seasons.

The show has been praised for multiple episodes across its repertoire, not least from recent seasons, including the sapphic love story in San Junipero, the bleak outlook on virtual reality in USS Callister and even an interactive movie, Bandersnatch.

But there has been mounting chatter online that the charm of the original two seasons which focused on British storytelling might have been lost under the big Netflix budget.

‘I hear that a lot,’ Charlie told Metro, jokingly referring to it as ‘the charm of the pig f***ing episode’.

He continued: ‘When we first did the Netflix season it was a conscious decision from me to do episodes like San Junipero which were evocative and romantic, sort of epic, cinematic feeling, sort of story.

‘That said, I think that we consistently continue doing episodes like Plaything, Loch Henry, Demon 79.  These are very, very British stories, which I don’t think anyone would say are charm offensive.

‘So I feel like that is slightly received wisdom when people say that. I get where they’re coming from but I think if you look overall in the season we do balance the big, slightly more epic stories with gritty ones where people are having a terrible time with terrible teeth.’

‘I think there’s a good balance.’

One such episode in the new season is Plaything, which follows a man called Cameron who is a murder suspect with a link to an unusual 90s video game.

It stars Will Poulter as returning Bandersnetch character Colin Ritman alongside Peter Capaldi and Lewis Gribben who play the older and younger version of the newly-introduced character Cameron.

‘Plaything isn’t really a sequel to Bandersnatch,’ Charlie clarified, as he explained how the character actually returns.

‘While I was writing it, it was a separately conceived story. I just got to the point of, “oh, well, now we’re going to go and meet the creator of this game”.

‘One of my favourite characters ever in the series was Colin Ritman. What if it could be him? And could we get Asim [Chaudhry] as well to play Mo, the owner of Tuckersoft? Could we do that?

‘But I guess we could. Why not? Who decides these rules? It’s not like the government is going to step in and shut us down. So that was why.’

Lewis shares a scene with Will in the upcoming episode and revealed he hasn’t actually seen Bandersnatch.

‘It’s one of the few things I haven’t watched, which probably helped, because I would have been a bit more like, “oh God”. Even just from the reception of the trailers and looking at comments and stuff like, [Will is] so loved as this character in that movie,’ he explained.

And added: ‘Bandersnatch obviously gives a certain little expectation to what people will like or not. I hope people realise, obviously, it’s part of it [but] It’s not the main part of it. It is a sequel of sorts. It’s more like an on-screen reference, more than he’s fully enamoured in it.’

Since Lewis is playing the younger version of the Doctor Who star, the pair quickly came up with a strategy themselves as believable as possible.

‘I said to Peter at the end of the readthrough, “you’re gonna have to play me though.” And he was like, “I guess so.” So that’s the way we did it.

‘It’s so well clearly lined out in the beginning [for him] to be anxious, nervous. He has a traumatic childhood growing up. I’ve played characters similar to him before, so I knew how to get into that.

‘Then what Peter did was he took voice recordings of me saying his lines. I walked in front of him a couple of times so that he could mimic my movements.

‘He would just take things from me and then add them to his version of the character. He kind of just scooped a bit of me and put it in him,’ Lewis shared.

The show is notoriously secretive, desperate to keep storylines under wraps and it was no different for this season, although Lewis did have one mishap.

‘There was a code name for the show. We only got the episode to read in full after we’d been cast so there’s measures of secrecy in place. It wasn’t so bad that you didn’t know what you’re going to be doing on the day in the middle of it. You’ve got to run lines,’ co-star Josh Finan said.

And Lewis recalled: ‘I remember when we were coming down for the read through I asked for a printout of the script, because I like to learn lines from the physical.

‘And I was on the train, and my bag opened up – the zip – and the script flung out on the middle of the of the train. But no one saw it.

‘I think one or two people saw the Netflix logo, but they didn’t see what it was, because it doesn’t have Black Mirror on the script or anything. But it was bit like “oh crap.” But no, we got away with it.’

Another quintessentially British episode, Bete Noir, follows ‘confectionary whizz kid Maria’ played by Siena Kelly whose life takes a strange turn when a ghost from her past, Verity (Rosy McEwan), lands a job at her workplace.

In the episode, we see an interesting dynamic playout as Maria, a Black woman, starts to feel some heat from Verity that no one else seems to notice.

It’s a powerful parallel to real-life dynamics, and something both Siena and Rosy took into consideration when bringing this story to life.

‘I don’t think we thought about it much. I thought the visuals would do enough. There wouldn’t be anything else we needed to add to it,’ Siena explained.

Then added: ‘I liked that about the casting, especially the reputation Black women get of being angry or volatile and so Maria having to be the one who is extremely professional and really keep her mouth shut.’

‘It felt right,’ Rosy echoed.

The show, intentional or not, is a mirror of the world we live in for better or for worse.

‘We’ve got these dystopian elements within our show, and there’s dystopian elements outside the window. So as an animal, selfishly, I try to block out the outside world often when writing, because it’s sort of depressing to look at the news at the moment,’ Charlie explained about his creative process.

This season includes an unconventional story starring Emma Corrin and Issa Rae with queer themes that the Cunk creator has said are more incidental than anything purposeful.

‘It’s definitely got similarities with San Junipero, obviously. It might sound like a weird thing to say but I don’t think too much about that when I’m writing.

‘Certainly when I was writing San Junipero, when I was writing Hotel Reverie – even though the characters are very specific, which makes it very specific – I’m thinking about universality.

‘And I think hopefully that comes across in the story that it’s not heavy-handed. I hope, in terms of themes, it feels like quite a universal love story and a fantastical story.

‘I think about it by not thinking about it if that makes sense and doesn’t sound too flippant.’

All six episodes of Black Mirror air on Netflix on Thursday, April 10.

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