Don’t count on any references to ex-UK Prime Minister David Cameron and “Brexit or pig” in the upcoming third season of Netflix‘s Black Mirror, the Netflix anthology series’ creator/executive producer Charlie Brooker clarified today at TCA. The half-joking question from a reporter was regarding an episode from the series’ first season which centered on a fictional prime minister who is forced to have sex with a pig on camera in exchange for a hostage’s life. After it aired, news broke of allegations of Cameron’s involvement with a pig for initiation purposes at university, which Booker maintained he knew nothing about at the time.
Brooker said onstage today that there would be no references to the “Cameron incident” — either Brexit or the pig, he said to laughs from the crowd. Netflix announced today the third season will be available globally on Netflix beginning October 21.
Black Mirror is tapping into the top talent pool for its upcoming third season, including Rashida Jones and Mike Shur, who co-wrote an episode that stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Alice Eve. “It turns out they were fans of the show and the feeling was mutual,” Brooker said about how that collaboration came about. The episode, titled “Nosedive” and directed by Joe Wright, is what Booker described as a “social satire about the identity in the social media age” and “a cheerful classical nightmare.”
Said exec producer Annabel Jones of casting the series: “We always try and set the story first — it’s got to feel right for the story, it’s got to feel right for the character. If someone is interested and there is a right story, then I think that is great. Once you start reverse-engineering stories, then you lose its authenticity.”
First premiering on UK’s Channel 4, Black Mirror taps into the collective unease with the modern world, and each stand-alone episode explores themes of contemporary techno-paranoia. But today Brooker insisted the show is not anti-technology. “Technology is never the villain in the show,” he said. “It’s about human failings and human messes.”
“The tech is really not even present,” Jones later added. “It’s about society and its about how we communicate, the online rage and the consequences of that. These stories tend to be about the modern age and the modern world that we live in.”
Speaking of what recent trends they missed, Brooker admitted he didn’t see Pokemon Go coming, but they “do have an episode the has a video gaming scene. “It’s fair to say that this season, some of the ideas are because we were aware of the greater progress of the world, that you’ve got to go two steps forward to stay ahead of reality at the moment. … There are things that are more more demented then Pokemon Go within this season.”
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