Black Mirror lightens up for third Netflix season
It should come as no TORONTO surprise that the man known for envisioning a world in which technology has surreptitiously taken over our lives is a worrier.
Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker says he can’t help but imagine all the horrific ways our digital obsessions and constant connectivity can spell disaster for humanity.
“Everything scares me,” the British writer says during a stop last month at the Toronto International Film Festival to preview the anthology’s third season.
“And so I like to think about the worst-case scenarios. … It’s an amazing, amazing communication tool. But there’s also these unforeseen ramifications of it that we’re, as a species, getting used to as we’re sort of smacking it around. It’s like a new limb that we’ve grown, that we’re accidentally knocking over furniture with.”
The eerily prescient TV series has garnered a cult following among technophobes and technophiles alike for its ability to chronicle an array of modern anxieties reflected in all those screens around us — whether they be smartphones, televisions or computers.
Who hasn’t worried about the repercussions of reusing their ubiquitous password for several accounts, or accessing an unprotected public Wi-Fi connection? But Black Mirror ramps those fears up into a frenzy of dread — with a good dose of the weird and hilarious.
Not to mention a very British sensibility. Brooker notes the series debuted with an especially dark tale about a British prime minister forced to have sex with a pig on live television.
“The National Anthem episode tends to shock people more often on this side of the Atlantic, whereas I guess maybe in the U.K. we laugh in a guttural way,” says Brooker, an occasional newspaper columnist, humorist, broadcaster and former video games reviewer who meets questions with a rapid-fire delivery, and the occasional expletive.
He says there’s a more international feel to this new batch of six episodes for Netflix. Two of them are set in the United States and Brooker says he’s musing on a Canadian-set story to be included in the next set of six shows, also destined for the streaming service.
There’s also a lighter touch in some of them, most notably the candy-coloured coming-of-age tale San Junipero, set in 1987 and starring Vancouver native Mack- enzie Davis and Brit actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
“Most of our episodes so far have been extremely bleak and horrible,” says Brooker. “This time, we wanted more of a variety of tone. So we do have other incredibly bleak, jet-dark stories coming up, but we’ve also got more playful ones.”
Brooker says he’s actually “protechnology,” which might surprise some fans of the series, “but what I am is a sort of neurotic worrier.”
Not that Black Mirror should be viewed as a cautionary tale, he adds.
“Because I don’t know any solution to anything,” he laughs.
“I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to put this show up and say: ‘Pay attention everyone! Eat your greens or this will happen!’ You know, I find that moralizing.”
Most of our episodes so far have been extremely bleak and horrible. This time, we wanted more of a variety of tone.