A new season of the acclaimed anthology series presents six new dystopian tales of technology gone awry
When Black Mirror first debuted back in 2011, the premise underlying Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi anthology series was the dark side of technology that’s become part of modern society via disparate tales of varying genres, set in the near future. Since then, that tech has infiltrated our everyday lives even further, making the stories in the series all the more relevant as they hit far closer to home.
With season seven arriving this week, viewers can once again expect some stellar performances from a cast including Peter Capaldi, Issa Rae, Paul Giamatti, Rashida Jones, Tracee Ellis Ross, Emma Corrin, Awkwafina and Chris O’Dowd. In addition, Will Poulter and Asim Chaudhry — who starred in the interactive Bandersnatch special from 2018 — will be returning, but in new roles.
In Giamatti’s episode, he plays a man grieving the loss of his longtime partner, who becomes able to step into old photos from their shared past that come alive via immersive artificial intelligence.
In order to convey the experience of still photos coming to life and then reverting to their original iteration, the episode’s directors, Chris Barrett and Luke Taylor, utilized dancers. Under the direction of acclaimed movement coach Polly Bennett, the dancers held their positions for several minutes while Giamatti’s character explored the physical space.
“Polly was responsible for how good it looks,” Barrett told Radio Times. “If you or I were to freeze, we’d probably strike a pose, but she helped the dancers move . . . and then pause. It wasn’t so much about being frozen but about capturing a moment in time.” Added Taylor, “We wanted the photos to feel candid and captured. It should look like someone’s just gone: click!”
Meanwhile, in a first for the series, one of the new episodes will revisit an earlier story, returning to the Emmy-winning season-four tale of the Star Trek-like USS Callister and its crew — which, as fans will recall, ended on a cliffhanger.
“This has been brewing for actually quite a long time,” Brooker said of the followup episode in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “And it’s partly because of the way that it ends. The first one ends like you could just carry that story on and follow where they go now. So it was always like, ‘Hmm, I’m going to do that.’ It was something we were looking at for quite a long time. There were various iterations it went through, various versions we wanted to do and were discussing on and off for several years. But there are a lot of schedules to sort out, and then the pandemic got in the way. It was something that looked like it wasn’t going to happen, and so I was delighted when it did. So, it’s been a minute. But even writing the characters is a luxury I don’t often get. I’ve never had it before on Black Mirror, to have a character that survives beyond one episode! So that’s been a lot of fun . . . But we continue the story from where we left off.”
According to Brooker, the six episodes that make up the seventh season represent a return to form while also breaking new ground. “We’re doing some things we’ve not done before,” Brooker told Deadline of the new season. “People can expect quite a lot of emotion and, hopefully, a good mix of chills. We did a couple of horror stories in season six, which we label as Red Mirror. But this time around, the episodes are all, in a way, like OG Black Mirror. I wrote one script, and the general consensus was that it was one of the bleakest, heaviest gut punches yet. There’s also tech-y episodes and ones that are making people cry. So, hopefully, it’s a full emotional workout, but we shall see. The viewers will be the judge.”
Black Mirror, streaming Thursday, April 17 on Netflix