Black mirror
ON SET WITH BLACK MIRROR’S CINEMATIC FOURTH SEASON…
On set in Iceland for the chilling fourth season.
This February, Iceland was covered by 51cm of snow overnight. Small Screen is acutely aware of this because we’re currently shin-deep in white stuff outside the Icelandic equivalent of Oscar Isaac’s future house in Ex Machina. Most filmmakers would call it a day in the face of such adverse conditions, but John Hillcoat – director of The Road and outback western The Proposition – thrives in extreme environments. “It’s very humbling because it’s a constant reminder of how powerful nature is,” the Aussie director smiles, cradling a cup of coffee. “It adds an energy. The world is right in front of you, and you have to deal with it.”
Deal with it is exactly what the crew of ‘Crocodile’ are doing, with filming on hold while everyone with a free pair of hands wrangles hoses of steaming water. The third episode to go before cameras for the fourth season of Charlie Brooker’s technoterror anthology series Black Mirror, ‘Crocodile’ is set predominantly in the ultra-isolated, super-modern abode of Andrea Riseborough’s Mia, a successful architect sporting a peroxide-blonde pixie cut. It’s the setting for a Scandiinflected thriller about a woman pushed to extremes when a terrible secret from her past come backs to haunt her.
The Black Mirror twist? It’s set in a world where a device can be used to
access your “raw impression of events” – including by insurance companies to approve claims. It’s in this capacity that Shazza (Kiran Sonia Sawar) has arrived at Mia’s house. After using the device, which resembles a chunky portable TV from the ’80s, Shazza swiftly heads to her car, perturbed by what the machine has shown her. “Got everything you need?” asks Mia from behind, fretfully. “Sometimes I have mad thoughts…”
remember this
The mad thoughts of Charlie Brooker, writer of all of Season 4’s six episodes, are the reason we’re here today. ‘Crocodile’ finds the series back on familiar ground by playing on memory, albeit from a different angle. “It’s all about how inaccurate our memory really is,” Hillcoat says. “Rather than ‘The Entire History Of You’ where perfect memories were captured by a camera implanted in the neck, this is more like where memories are dreams.”
Hillcoat’s films often exist in a murky moral grey zone, so it’s little surprise he felt an affinity for Brooker’s dark vision of the future. Riseborough too was attracted by the prospect of playing a dubious figure. “Originally, the part I’m playing was a man,” Riseborough reveals, perched on the end of her character’s bed. “When I suggested I play the man’s part there were concerns that people wouldn’t have sympathy for a woman; there would be more judgement. And I said, ‘That’s exactly why we should do it.’”
With Jodie Foster, Colm McCarthy and David Slade also directing episodes in Season 4, Black Mirror has lost none of its knack for attracting big-screen talent. “What’s great about the format of Black Mirror is that they’re complete one-offs, so I’ve approached it from a cinematic
level,” Hillcoat says. “Generally, the mature audience has been overlooked by the film industry. The material in TV got more and more interesting as movies started to get less interesting; that’s what sparked my interest as a filmmaker.”
show-stopping
Describing each season as being “like a little film festival”, Brooker says S4 will go further than ever before in terms of the “wider variety of tones”. Good news after the Emmy-winning success of ‘San Junipero’ – Black Mirror’s first ‘hopeful’ yarn. “[‘San Junipero’] was a story where I was deliberately refitting what I thought Black Mirror was,” he says. “It’s extremely gratifying that people have enjoyed it, because it’s expanded what this show is.”
Something else new for S4: Brooker has changed his stance on the interconnectedness of his stories. “When people used to ask me, ‘Are these all set in the same universe?’, I’d go, ‘No,’” he recalls. “But now explicitly some of them are. There are nods and winks, and sometimes direct references to things.” As for the future, Brooker rules out the big screen – but there is a book of short stories on the way, while “games and comics are two worlds that I’ve thought about”, he confirms. “But it would have to be right.” Jordan Farley
Black Mirror SeaSon 4 coMeS to netflix thiS DeceMBer.
‘the material in tv got more and more interesting as movies started to get less interesting’ JoHn HILLCoAT