Our favorite mind-bending watch is heading back to Netflix.
“Black Mirror will return, and hopefully it’ll be more Black Mirror than ever,” creator Charlie Brooker teased in a recent interview with Tudum. His reveal comes on the heels of the show’s first Golden Globe nods, with Season 7 nabbing a nomination for Best Television Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television, and Rashida Jones and Paul Giamatti picking up nominations for their performances in the Season 7 episodes “Common People” and “Eulogy,” respectively.
“It was a pleasant surprise and an honor,” Brooker says. “I mean, obviously, I don’t experience human emotion, but as much as I can emulate it, I was pleased.”
Ahead of the Golden Globes ceremony on Jan. 11, Brooker unpacked the making of Season 7 and gave us a glimpse at his upcoming Netflix projects.
Let’s go back to filming “Common People” and “Eulogy.” What scenes or moments were particularly gratifying to watch Rashida and Paul bring to life?
Charlie Brooker: One of the things that [Rashida and I] talked about a lot was nailing the precise tone of the commercial messages that she starts spouting as part of the story. It’s deceptively difficult to get it right. She did a wonderful job of performing those in a way that felt like a commercial message, but you can also see an absence in her eyes.
All the deeply emotional scenes in the episode, she did an amazing job there as well. I’m thrilled for her. She’s a Black Mirror alumni going back all the way to “Nosedive,” because she co-wrote that [episode]. She’s kind of Black Mirror family.
And then Paul in “Eulogy” — he’s got an incredibly hard job in that episode, because it’s kind of a two-hander. There are only two speaking parts: There’s him and Patsy [Ferran], who plays The Guide. Most of the time, he’s walking around worlds in which people are frozen stiff. He’s just speaking to a [device] on his forehead. His character has made some bad life choices, and he’s quite grouchy, but Paul invests him with a real, deep humanity, a lightness of touch, and then he breaks your heart at the end.
As a viewer, Black Mirror episodes stay with you long after you finish watching. I am still thinking about “Common People.” What’s the Season 7 episode that lingers the most for you?
Brooker: That is a tricky one. It’s really difficult to say; it’s like [how] you wouldn’t choose a favorite child. There are moments in all of them. I am really proud of “Common People.” I think that it’s haunting, and it’s vicious as a piece of satire. When I gave that script to one of our producers, he said, “That is the distilled essence of Black Mirror.”
“Eulogy,” I think, is one of my favorite Black Mirrors of all time. It’s heartbroken in tone, but it’s kind of beautiful. The depth of emotion in that episode is something I’m very proud of. I have lots of moments [throughout the series] where I also slightly think, “Oh, thank God we got away with that.” We did the “USS Callister” sequel and got all our cast back. That was really amazing. There are just loads.
Is there one particular episode that comes to mind where you remember thinking, “Thank God we got away with that”?
Brooker: I would say “Common People” and “Eulogy.” With both episodes, we had people saying, “Jesus Christ.” People found them devastating, and in different ways. “Common People” is devastatingly sad. “Eulogy” is a little more bittersweet, but devastatingly sad. Getting a big emotional reaction from viewers is great. We also have the more playful side of things across the season — we managed to gaslight viewers in “Bête Noire.” We did a tricksy thing with the alternate spellings, and there are two versions of that episode that different viewers see different versions of. It was a bit of a meta joke that worked better than I could have anticipated, so I’m pleased with that.
On the subject of fan reactions, what’s been the episode you’ve most enjoyed seeing fan discourse about?
Brooker: Well, I mean, look, with Black Mirror, one of the things fans are always going to do is rank them. People have wildly different [takes]. Of all the seasons we’ve done, this is the one where I think I’ve seen every episode at the top and bottom of someone’s list, which is part of Black Mirror’s DNA. I always wanted each episode to feel like it had quite a lot of variety, even though obviously the subject matter, the focus, it’s gone through my brain, and there’s a Black Mirror-y tone to it.
But within that, we’ll do rom-coms, we’ll do space operas, we’ll do kitchen-sink dramas. We’re a relatively old show in the grand scheme of television, so the fact that the debate is still alive, and that people were fiercely debating which was their favorite, I think that really is the reaction to the season as a whole. I sometimes say that we’re now like a band. Our very early episodes were all punk singles, and then we started doing occasional ballads like “San Junipero,” or we’d do a dance number. It’s like putting together an album with a punk single, a disco number, a stadium-rock thing, a heartfelt acoustic ballad, and so on. It’s interesting. I find the debate interesting.
Was there one episode in Season 7 that was the toughest to crack?
Brooker: They all have different challenges. With something like “Eulogy,” there was the technical challenge of, “How does this work when he goes into these photographs, and they’re effectively static? How is that visually interesting? How do you pull it off?” There were actually a lot of people who were dancers and performers who were frozen in place for a long time. They’ve got, I think, metal rods to stop their arms getting tired.
But something like “Hotel Reverie,” it’s very challenging when you’re in the edit of how you’re balancing the story in the old movie with the story that’s going on in the real world. And with “USS Callister,” you’ve got a lot of story to get to, and there’s a lot of information you need to give viewers who might have seen the first episode six years ago.
Each one comes with a new set of challenges. In a way, it’s like the first day of school every time, which is fun, but exhausting. “Plaything” we had to figure out what the creatures in the game were going to look like. We are really lucky, because we have amazing actors. Because the performers are really good, we often end up focusing on … what are we going to see on that iPad?
Right, like what chip should Issa Rae wear in “Hotel Reverie”?
Brooker: Precisely. At what point are we milking out her pupils? The little device on the side of Paul’s head, even calibrating that was unbelievably difficult, but in a way that you just don’t notice as a viewer. It’s often the tiny little details.
You mentioned that working on Black Mirror feels like the first day of school — and, in a way, you’re also going to your first day of school with your new untitled Netflix series. What can you tell us about it?
Brooker: There’s definitely something I’m not saying about it at the moment just yet. I can’t even tell you what it’s called yet, but it’s very much not Black Mirror. I can say that. It’s a very, very different thing. The most detective show of all time. It’s a deeply profound and profoundly serious crime thriller.
Do you have your own personal favorite crime thrillers?
Brooker: I love a crime thriller. I love Columbo, I love Seven, I’m a big fan of shows like The Bridge, The Killing, and Knives Out. Obviously, they come in different flavors, and I think it’s fair to say we’ve kind of drawn inspiration from every single one of them.
What can you tease about the future of Black Mirror?
Brooker: Well, luckily it does have a future, so I can confirm that Black Mirror will return, just in time for reality to catch up with it. So, that’s exciting. That chunk of my brain has already been activated and is whirring away.
As you say, putting together a season is like making an album, so I’m curious what kind of tune this one will be?
Brooker: It’s a useful thought experiment when approaching a new story. I’ll often think of, “Well, what haven’t we done yet, and what tone am I looking for? … Where does this track come on the album, and what musical direction are we going to go into?” We’ll find out. Very unlikely you’ll ever see a Black Mirror hoedown.
