After years of creating dark, disturbing, thought-provoking TV, Charlie Brooker is changing it up. The creator and star-studded cast of Black Mirror talk about why this season is the most moving and vulnerable yet
Charlie Brooker has been contemplating the passing of time, and he’s not happy about it. We’re on set at Shepperton for USS Callister: Into Infinity, the sequel to the 2017 space opera from his terrifying tech anthology Black Mirror. “The cast don’t seem to have aged at all,” he grumbles, “whereas I am a wizened old gentleman.”
There is a more reflective, almost nostalgic tone to this seventh season. The episode Plaything flashes back to Brooker’s early years as a gaming journalist in a Bandersnatch-adjacent slice of computer-induced madness; Eulogy immerses Paul Giamatti in his memories as he literally enters decades-old photos; gaslighting parable Bête Noire forces Siena Kelly’s chocolatier to reckon with youthful misdemeanours; Hotel Reverie stars Emma Corrin as a 1940s matinee idol falling for Issa Rae’s modern film star, who plays her white, male love interest in an AI remake of a vintage romance.
Continue reading...