Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

UNSETTLING

THOUGHT-PROVOKING

TIMELY

Since its shocking debut, Black Mirror has steadily grown to become a global phenomenon.

Over four series and nineteen films, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones take us on the Black Mirror journey. Told oral history style, they are joined by the voices of their many collaborators, including Bryce Dallas Howard, Jon Hamm, Jodie Foster, Jodie Whittaker, Mackenzie Davis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alex Lawther, Letitia Wrightand dozens more.

Making boundary-pushing television isn’t easy. Each standalone episode is a challenging leap into the unknown for the viewer — and the creators. This is the definitive and unfiltered account of how they did it.

‘Back in 2010 the general view of technology was still a rosy one. Now it’s all gone sour. It’s all gone a bit ‘Black Mirror’ , in fact, which is bad for human civilization, but good publicity for our little TV show. Every cloud, eh?’ – Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker (Author)

Charlie Brooker is an award-winning writer, producer and broadcaster whose career has spanned television, radio, print, and online media.

Brooker is the creator and writer of Black Mirror , whose fourth season launched on Netflix at the end of 2017 and won a BAFTA Craft Award and has recently picked up three BAFTA TV Awards nominations. The critically acclaimed, mind-bending anthology series originally launched on Channel 4 in 2011 and over its four seasons has collected awards including Primetime Emmys® for Outstanding TV Movie and Outstanding Writing for a TV Movie, Producers Guild of America, Rose D’or, BAFTA, International Emmy® and Peabody.

Charlie has presented numerous television shows including three series of his BBC Two satirical review show Weekly Wipe, the third series of which was nominated for the 2015 BAFTA for Best Comedy and Comedy Entertainment Programme, and the annual shindig Charlie Brooker’s End of Year Wipe, which won a BAFTA for its 2016 edition. Also, Charlie previously presented the BAFTA-nominated Election Wipe, Gameswipe and Newswipe, which won the 2009 Royal Television Society Award for Best Entertainment Programme and the How TV Ruined Your Life series for BBC TWO. He has also presented You Have Been Watching and 10 O’Clock Live for Channel 4, which he was also BAFTA-nominated for in 2014.

Charlie is also behind the BBC Two series Cunk on Britain and the BAFTA-nominated Cunk on Shakespeare with regular Weekly Wipe contributor Philomena Cunk.

He also co-wrote the critically acclaimed detective spoof A Touch of Cloth for Sky One. The TV film trilogy starred John Hannah and Suranne Jones and won the Broadcast Award for Best Comedy and was nominated for the RTS Award for Best Comedy.

In 2008 Brooker wrote the five-part thriller Dead Set , which starred Jaime Winstone and Riz Ahmed and was nominated for a Best Drama Serial BAFTA; and co-wrote with Chris Morris the six-part comedy series Nathan Barley for Channel 4.

Annabel Jones (Author)

Annabel Jones is a long-term collaborator of Charlie Brooker’s. She serves as co-show runner and executive producer on Black Mirror , which Brooker created and writes. In addition to its recent BAFTA TV nominations and BAFTA Craft win, over its four seasons Black Mirror has garnered awards at the Primetime Emmys® for Outstanding TV Movie and Outstanding Writing for a TV Movie, Producers Guild of America, Rose D’or, BAFTA, International Emmy® and Peabody.

Previously Jones executive produced a number of shows presented by Charlie Brooker including three series of the BAFTA-nominated BBC Two satirical review Weekly Wipe ; all seven editions of the annual shindig Charlie Brooker’s End of Year Wipe, which won a BAFTA for its 2016 edition; How Video Games Changed the World; Newswipe, which won the 2009 Royal Television Society Award for Best Entertainment Programme; Gameswipe; and the How TV Ruined Your Life series for BBC Two.

In 2016 Jones was executive producer of the BAFTA-nominated Cunk on Shakespeare and festive special Cunk on Christmas with regular Weekly Wipe contributor Philomena Cunk. Between 2012–2014 Jones executive produced the acclaimed detective spoof trilogy A Touch of Cloth for Sky One, starring John Hannah and Suranne Jones, which won the Broadcast Award for Best Comedy and was nominated at the RTS Awards for Best Comedy. In 2008 Jones executive produced the five-part thriller Dead Set , which starred Jaime Winstone and Riz Ahmed and was nominated for a Best Drama Serial BAFTA.

Recently, Jones served as executive producer of the BBC Two series Cunk on Britain .

Jason Arnopp (Co-author)

Jason Arnopp is a novelist and scriptwriter, with a background in journalism for such titles as Heat , Q , Kerrang!, SFX and Doctor Who Magazine . He wrote the terrifying 2016 Orbit Books novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks , acclaimed by the likes of Ron Howard, Sarah Lotz and Alan Moore. Arnopp’s previous works include official Doctor Who and Friday The 13th tie-in fiction, Beast in the Basement : A Sincere Warning About the Entity in Your Home and the non-fiction title How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne and Everyone Else . He lives in Brighton, UK, and can be found on Twitter as @jasonarnopp.

Doubt. I’ve been writing for years, but even now, sitting down in front of a blank page still floods me with crippling doubt. Which is probably why I put off writing this foreword until the publishers wept.

Writing a script involves constantly ignoring a whiny little voice in your head telling you to stop, and attempting to encourage a more cheerful voice urging you to press on. For me the trick is to try to picture the finished film in my head, and describe what I’m seeing and hearing. It’s a bit like wishing a world into reality. What follows is an oddly magical process in which that imaginary world gradually becomes real, via a series of waypoints – the first design sketches, the first read-through, the first day of shooting, the first rough cut. Every one of these events still shocks me a little. Something that only existed in your head now exists in the world, like an imaginary friend suddenly ringing your doorbell.

But then imagination becoming reality seems to be a recurrent theme at the moment. It never fails to surprise me that Black Mirror (or, as Americans call it, Black Meer ) has been around for almost a decade now. We started working on it way back in 2010 – which, in technological terms, was virtually a different epoch.

In the current era of 24-hour online screaming and Russian disrupt-o-bots, it’s hard to remember – but way back then, in 2010, the general view of technology was still a rosy one. The worst thing anyone said about Twitter was that it was full of people wasting their lunch breaks. Apple launching a new iPhone model still seemed like an exciting proposition, and the Arab Spring was just around the corner, something social media platforms seemed only too happy to take the credit for. Fast-forward to now and suddenly smartphones are twice as addictive and harmful as cigarettes and your timeline’s full of fascist memes and photographed atrocities.