With its chilling visions of the near future, Charlie Brooker’s dark science-fiction series, Black Mirror, has managed to stay ahead of the game and world events (but only just) over the course of its six series.
Brooker, 54, got noticed as the author of TVGoHome, a spoof of the Radio Times listings website, which earned him a column in The Guardian. There, he vented on everything from politics to reality TV before embarking on a television career of his own — writing the Big Brother-set zombie horror series Dead Set and the weekly satirical show Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe.
As Black Mirror’s seventh series comes to our screens, with a cast that includes Paul Giamatti, Chris O’Dowd and Emma Corrin, Brooker reveals the TV, film and video games that have shaped his singularly dark world view.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-74)
I grew up in a quiet village in south Oxfordshire. Television, with its three channels, was an escape. At various stages in my life I’ve enjoyed anarchic comedy shows such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Young Ones and Chris Morris’s The Day Today, which mix satire and quite intelligent, angry comedy with stupid jokes.
I was too young to watch Monty Python when it came out but it was repeated when I was about eight and my dad would insist I stayed up to watch it. I couldn’t believe you could make a comedy that funny.
The Day Today depressed me because I thought I couldn’t achieve anything that clever. I enjoyed how all those shows played with form — whether it was a Python episode pretending it had finished or The Young Ones suddenly turning into an episode of The Good Life. I would spout catchphrases from them all the time, so it was hard not to emulate them as a writer. But as you develop your voice you become more confident in your style.
Right now I tend to avoid shows that people say are “like Black Mirror” and are good because I think I’ll get crushing professional jealousy. For instance, I haven’t watched Severance even though everyone has told me to.
Circus Atari (1977)
My first video game experience was at a leisure centre in Wantage, Oxfordshire. I was seven and the game [which involved popping balloons] was already old: a black-and-white monitor with coloured strips of plastic across the screen to give the illusion of colour. I was fascinated by the idea of a television that you could control. It was like magic.
Threads (1984)
A lot of comedians are horror buffs because we’re often thinking of something absurd or a worst-case scenario. Threads was a two-part nuclear war drama set in Britain and then in what remained of Britain. I was 13 when I saw it and it shook me up — it was terrifying. I grew up in an era when it seemed as if nuclear war was inevitable. Scarily, we seem to be back in that era. I don’t ever want to watch it again.
The Wicker Man (1973)
Late one night when I was a teenager they showed The Wicker Man on TV. I had never heard of it and I couldn’t believe the ending.
Pitiless movies like that, or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Dawn of the Dead, made me realise you could root for a character and then have them be f***ed by the end. It opened the door to me seeing the hero doesn’t need to win.
I have shown my children, who are 13 and 11, Monty Python but I won’t be sitting them down to watch The Wicker Man or Threads anytime soon. I’ve shown them only one episode of Black Mirror — USS Callister [from the fourth series] — and even that has moments that freaked them out a bit. Maybe I’m a wuss, because I bump into people with kids younger than mine who have seen them all.
RoboCop (1987)
At 16 I was too young to watch RoboCop, so I sneaked into a cinema to see it. It’s spooky, crazed, satirical and cynical. Then I got it on VHS and watched it on repeat until I could recite it. With the possible exception of Barbie, Hollywood rarely makes big satirical movies like those any more.
If I ever made a Black Mirror movie, I’d try to emulate RoboCop and The Truman Show. As with the latter, I’m much more interested in the scenario that the characters find themselves in than the minutiae of how it works. What’s frustrating is that I’ll often carry an idea for a Black Mirror episode around for a long time before I’ve worked out what the story is, but then sometimes, annoyingly, reality catches up. I have ideas where I’m worried that by the time we get them on air, it may be like recounting something that happened a week ago.
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The Beatles: Get Back (2021)
During the grim and depressing part of lockdown, this show was a comfort binge. I was one of those people who came to the Beatles later in life and I subscribe to the view they are underrated as musicians. I can’t think of funnier pop stars. They were perfect and make me proud to be British. Peter Jackson’s series was sharp, clean and like watching a series of Big Brother beamed in from the 1960s. There are episodes in the new Black Mirror that are inspired by this documentary, where there’s someone using technology to remaster the past.
Doom (1993)
I was a video game journalist in the 1990s and it sounds stupid now but when I saw Doom [a first-person shooter] I couldn’t believe how real it looked. I played it obsessively. It has a bleak humour to it and is unforgiving. I’m now obsessed with Balatro, a video game that looks like poker. It’s the most addictive digital substance. I played it for 11 hours on a long-haul flight and would have been happy if the pilot said the flight time had doubled.
The perception of video games is changing with adaptations like The Last of Us and Minecraft, but there’s still a holdover from the 1980s when people assumed they were for kids.
I find it mystifying that video games can be looked down on, while being into sport is seen as macho or highbrow. There used to be this idea that video games were just for virginal young men who lived in their mum’s basement — now at least people realise that both genders play them. Still, you’ll never get somebody asking Keir Starmer what his favourite video game is.
Up (1964-2019)
I watch more documentaries than dramas. I watched the Up box set [which filmed 14 people from the age of seven into their sixties] over a long weekend and it was a terrifying experience because it’s other people’s lives flashing before you. You feel like you’re ageing.
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One of the new Black Mirror episodes, Eulogy, is about analogue photography. My dad passed away over the new year and I had to deliver his eulogy. Eerily, life imitated art and I had to find photographs to project on to the wall. It is striking that, until phones arrived, you had only a handful of photos and they were all blurry. Now everything is documented.
I’m writing a lot of characters who are looking back or using technology to excavate the past. I wasn’t consciously trying to do that but I think it’s because I’m getting older. I have more time behind me than ahead of me. And maybe it’s because the future seems so scary and I don’t want to predict it too much.
The new series of Black Mirror starts on Netflix on Apr 10
What’s your favourite episode of Black Mirror? Let us know in the comments below
