Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

People also ask whether Trent deserves to get blocked by all of society. First of all, we’re saying this is quite obviously a very punitive society that we’ve created here. There’s even a visual nod to White Bear : a lot of the police things have little White Bear symbols on them. There’s one on Potter’s cell door, when they look through and see the real him. So there’s this vague back story of a future dystopian Britain. But also Trent’s been filming people without their knowledge and doing lots of other stuff.

Annabel Jones:“Lots of other stuff”?! Trent witnessed a young man being poisoned to death and abandoned him! Even Jon Hamm can’t get away with that.

Charlie Brooker:Trent’s really nasty, but because he’s charming, that must be why people find it quite harsh. Trent’s punishment is surely not far off, though: a bit like someone with a conviction on their record, which you’d see if you were Googling them to employ them. So it’s a hellish representation of that going on in real time.

Jon Hamm:I’m a big believer in redemption and forgiveness, so I think Trent should be punished, but also be able to access a path of redemption. White Christmas 2 , anyone?

Charlie Brooker:I do remember being very worried that White Christmas would be disjointed. I remember going, “But it’s not about anything!” And (a) like that matters; and (b) it is about something. There’s a lot of stuff covered in there, like punishment, and whether AI is a form of life. It’s also about two quite flawed men and Facebook stalking. So there’s actually loads going on: I don’t know why I thought it wasn’t about anything. Also, karaoke gets covered.

Annabel Jones:Do you remember what happened on the day of the White Christmas press screening?

Charlie Brooker:I do remember! So, shall we say? Okay then…

In Conversation

Charlie Brooker – executive producer

Annabel Jones – executive producer

Cindy Holland – Vice President of Original Content, Netflix

Lucy Dyke – producer

Joel Collins – series production designer

Jina Jay – series casting director

Peter Friedlander – Vice President of Original Series, Netflix

Charlie Brooker:The run-up to Christmas 2014 was a horrible, horrible time. My dad was quite ill and I was supposed to be doing my end-of-year Wipe show for BBC Two, but that kept getting delayed because we were still in the edit on White Christmas . It was a nightmare.

We literally worked on White Christmas up until the day of its press screening at the Channel 4 building. In fact, I think one FX shot was still missing. But we got to the end, and we thought it was strong and that Channel 4 would be happy. And then, right before the press screening, we had a meeting with the channel, which we assumed would be about making more Black Mirror episodes.

Annabel Jones:We also probably expected a pat on the back, because we’d just delivered White Christmas that very morning, there was a press screening happening in an hour and we had Jon Hamm at this event, giving his all to the press.

Charlie Brooker:Now, I’m not good at knowing how meetings are going. I can’t quite read the chess moves, when someone says one thing but actually means something else. It’s like I can’t hear it. Also, I’m too busy jabbering.

Annabel Jones:Not jabbering. You’re performing a little bit, in terms of…

Charlie Brooker:Like a little monkey in a waistcoat, doing a dance? That’s what you think I am, isn’t it: a chimp in a fucking waistcoat with a little fez.

Annabel Jones:I wish you were that articulate. Anyway, for that whole year, we hadn’t been able to get a meeting with Channel 4 about a third series…

Charlie Brooker: …and in this meeting, they said they’d like more Black Mirror , but anthologies are expensive, so it would have to be a co-production. So that felt deflating.

Annabel Jones:Channel 4 already knew that, at their request, we’d been to LA a few months earlier to try and secure co-production money, but had failed.

Charlie Brooker:And then they said, “But here’s what we are doing…”

Annabel Jones:Big news!

Charlie Brooker:They told us they were working with Bryan Cranston on this anthology show called Electric Dreams , adapting Philip K. Dick stories. Maybe, they suggested, I could write one of those? And I thought, “I’m not good at gauging what’s going on in meetings, but I’m feeling angry. Am I wrong? Am I misreading what’s going on here? Is this insulting?” They’d just told me they couldn’t afford to do our show, but what they were doing sounded conceptually similar.

I couldn’t believe it. I remember coming out of there, looking at Annabel and she was furious. And upset.

Annabel Jones:I don’t often show when I’m upset, but there were actual tears from me. They’d just basically told Charlie his show was going to be cancelled, an hour before he went out to do a big press meeting. And they were replacing it with another sci-fi anthology show that looked to us like it was more expensive to produce, with more episodes and probably filming overseas.

Charlie Brooker:I was shell-shocked as we went downstairs. Jon Hamm, Rafe Spall and our director Carl Tibbetts were there, and [the journalist] Andrew Collins was going to do an onstage Q&A with us. So I’m standing there and everyone’s in a good mood. It’s Christmas, there’s champagne and mince pies, and we’re about to have the screening for this thing that everyone’s happy about.

I went straight into the end-of-year Wipe show for the BBC, immersing myself in the edit. The Black Mirror situation was all very depressing. We’d had a really good thing going there, making these little mini movies with a lot of creative freedom, and we were doing quite well. And now we’d stumbled and stopped. We were absolutely convinced that this was the end of Black Mirror .

Annabel Jones:But then, before Christmas, everything changed. The first two series of Black Mirror went up on Netflix in the US and the show caught fire. Everyone was talking about it. We were being contacted by all the networks. Suddenly there was going to be a bidding war.

Charlie Brooker:By January 2015, we were in a good position. Now it was like, “Which American network do we go with?” And this seemed to solve the problem with Channel 4, because they wanted us to find someone like HBO or AMC or Netflix to help fund Black Mirror . But that was when stage two of the Channel 4 discussions began.

Annabel Jones:Netflix were showing Black Mirror and it had gone huge for them. So they led the bidding war, offering us a commitment of two seasons, each with 10 episodes. They said, “You’re green-lit; don’t present us with any ideas, just start.”

Charlie Brooker:They basically told us just to carry on doing what we were doing.

Annabel Jones:That is unheard of, in the UK or the US. If you make a two-season commitment to a drama series that is a big, big deal, but you know what you’re committing to, because you’ve got continuous characters and a story arc. To commission essentially what could be about 20 films, off nothing, is nuts!