{"id":6677,"date":"2016-09-20T09:01:12","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T13:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/exclusive-interview-charlie-brooker-talks-black-mirrors-move-to-netflix\/"},"modified":"2016-09-20T14:29:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T18:29:00","slug":"exclusive-interview-charlie-brooker-talks-black-mirrors-move-to-netflix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/exclusive-interview-charlie-brooker-talks-black-mirrors-move-to-netflix\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive Interview: Charlie Brooker Talks Black Mirror’s Move to Netflix"},"content":{"rendered":"

PREMIUM: Black Mirror<\/em> creator and writer Charlie Brooker talks to TV Drama<\/em> about what viewers can expect from season three of the dystopian drama with its move to Netflix, where it debuts next month.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> After having put a flag in the ground with comedy and satire, what led you to veer a bit darker with Black Mirror<\/em>?
\nBROOKER:<\/strong> The first sort of dark drama that I did was Dead Set<\/em>, which is a zombie\/horror series that sounds like a comedy because it\u2019s set in the Big Brother <\/em>house. I\u2019ve always been a fan of horror movies, science fiction and dark twist-in-the-tale stories. I feel like those actually go hand in hand with comedy. Often when I first think of the Black Mirror <\/em>ideas they make me laugh. Comic writers generally have an affinity with those kinds of \u201cwhat-if\u201d stories\u2014stories that explore an idea to its logical conclusion, which is often an absurd one. In that way, it felt like a natural progression to me.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> A lot of the themes in Black Mirror <\/em>are rooted in the idea of a highly technological future. Was that the starting point for the series?
\nBROOKER:<\/strong> After I\u2019d done Dead Set<\/em>, we were thinking of another project to do that was a drama. I had always been a fan of anthology shows like The Twilight Zone<\/em>, Tales of the Unexpected <\/em>and Hammer House of Horror<\/em>. Also, when I was growing up, the BBC used to put on these one-off TV movies that were often very conceptual and quite controversial. I felt like there wasn\u2019t much of that happening anymore.<\/p>\n

I began thinking about doing a series of what-if stories. I thought about, If you were doing The Twilight Zone <\/em>today, what would you be talking about? At the time of The<\/em> Twilight Zone<\/em>, McCarthyism and the Cold War were foremost worries. Today, technology is the thing that\u2019s swept in and is upending everything\u2014for the better or for the worse. I\u2019m not afraid of technology; I\u2019m a gadget-lover! I\u2019m quite geeky when it comes to technology. I\u2019m also neurotic and a worrier. If you present me with some new gizmo, I naturally think of (either to amuse myself or because I\u2019m worried) ways that it will go terribly wrong. In our episodes, technology is never really the villain. It\u2019s a tool that\u2019s in the background that our characters are using to wreck their own lives.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:\u00a0<\/strong>The first two seasons were a hit with global audiences far outside the U.K. Did you expect the series to resonate so well internationally?
\nBROOKER:<\/strong> Oftentimes when you\u2019re making a show you just have your head down and are trying to fight fires and get it made. So it was a really pleasant surprise that it seems to have gone down well globally. The topics we\u2019ve been tackling are global ones. When [Black Mirror<\/em>] first came along there weren\u2019t many shows dealing with this kind of stuff, so that helped as well. On the one hand, I thought it was a very British show and I certainly didn\u2019t anticipate it catching on around the world. On the other, I suppose that in retrospect the themes are global.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:\u00a0<\/strong>How did the deal with Netflix come about for season three?
\nBROOKER:<\/strong> When the original seasons went up on Netflix in the U.S., there was really good word of mouth about it quite quickly. It felt to me that a platform like Netflix, a streaming platform, was the ideal home for an anthology show like Black Mirror<\/em>. Traditionally anthology series like Twilight Zone <\/em>or Tales of the Unexpected <\/em>would struggle slightly in [linear] broadcast schedules because there\u2019s no cliffhanger at the end of the episode to get everybody back next week. On Netflix the whole thing launches in one go, so it makes it more like a short film festival or a collection of stories. It\u2019s the sort of home that anthology shows have been waiting for. In that respect, Netflix was the perfect partner.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:\u00a0<\/strong>How did your experience working with Netflix on season three differ from that of the previous two seasons with Channel 4?
\nBROOKER:<\/strong> In some ways, it didn\u2019t differ at all. I\u2019ve been very fortunate in that we\u2019ve often had a lot of creative freedom. With Netflix, though, you don\u2019t have the restrictions of trying to come up with cuts for ad breaks, and you don\u2019t have to deal with all sorts of censorship issues that you might if you were on an overseas commercial broadcaster. You\u2019ve got freedom of duration and don\u2019t have to cut things to a commercial hour.<\/p>\n

All the notes, observations and feedback from Netflix have been really smart. It\u2019s been a positive experience. They\u2019re encouraging and enthusiastic. It\u2019s not that they applaud absolutely everything we do, but if they have any criticisms they\u2019re always very well considered, thought-out and useful.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:\u00a0<\/strong>What are the advantages of working with a different director on each episode in the series?
\nBROOKER:<\/strong> In many ways, it\u2019s perfect because you want each story to feel distinct from the others yet have enough in common that it fits under the Black Mirror <\/em>umbrella without feeling random. The stories are pouring out of my head, and different directors interpret things in different ways. We get them involved in the scripting process and have lots of conversations, and the script may evolve in ways that I hadn\u2019t initially foreseen. We\u2019ll do rewrites and move things around. Sometimes they\u2019ll come in with a really interesting stylistic idea that would not have occurred to me in a million years. What\u2019s great is that it means you\u2019ve got all these individual idiosyncratic interpretations of your source material, which immediately lends a lot of variety.<\/p>\n

On top of that, there are all sorts of challenges. Everyone has different quirks and different ways of seeing things, and the challenge is that you\u2019re always starting again. You don\u2019t necessarily have that shorthand that would develop if you were making a series in which there was an ongoing story. You\u2019re learning the ropes again each time.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Season three has a much larger episode count. Was that something you and Netflix worked out together?
\nBROOKER:<\/strong> We\u2019re doing this season of six and another season of six, which is double what we did before when each season had three. They\u2019re also bigger in scope. We arrived at that number together. We didn\u2019t want to suddenly start making ten because we wanted to make sure that they retained the same quality that we had before. When we were doing three per season I was also doing all sorts of other series, whereas now I\u2019m focusing most of my time on this. If you\u2019re doing a series that has one overarching story line, you don\u2019t have to recast every time. For us, all the sets have to be rebuilt; we have to create the world each time anew. In that respect, it\u2019s a lot harder. Six felt like a good number to aim for, and thank god we seem to have done it!<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:\u00a0<\/strong>With a global platform, and a larger budget, did you feel that you had to go bigger with the new episodes or make them more international?
\nBROOKER:<\/strong> It doesn\u2019t feel like we had to; it just sort of followed where the stories went, to be honest. Of course, we did bear in mind that this is going to premiere globally and that probably affects the kind of palette that you\u2019re working on. Diversity was something that I wanted to up in the series generally. Having said that, there are quite a few quirky British things in there because I\u2019m proud of my home country! It\u2019s hopefully British but outward looking, which is kind of the opposite of Britain at the moment! [Laughs<\/em>]\n

There are certainly some stories that are expansive in scope. There are definitely ones that are bigger than what we\u2019ve done before, but we haven\u2019t gone for the spectacle just for the sake of it. There\u2019s probably more variety in tone than we\u2019ve done before. When you\u2019re doing six episodes instead of three, you can say, I want one that\u2019s funnier or I want one that\u2019s incredibly dark, so it balances out overall.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:\u00a0<\/strong>What\u2019s your take on the binge-viewing phenomenon? It seems as though getting sucked into a screen and devouring hours of episodes on end the way viewers do with Black Mirror <\/em>is just the sort of technological dystopia that your show addresses.
\nBROOKER:<\/strong> Endless pleasure! You always want one more. It\u2019s kind of irresistible. People have always sat down in front of the TV for hours, ever since the invention of television. I was recently bingeing [a series] on Netflix, and it does feel very moreish and slightly decadent, but it doesn\u2019t feel like you\u2019re wasting your time. This feels to me just like getting engrossed in a good book. While I can see that to someone peeking in your window, it probably looks disturbing, but what the hell are they doing looking in your window in the first place? [Laughs<\/em>]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PREMIUM: Black Mirror creator and writer Charlie Brooker talks to World Screen Newsflash about what viewers can expect from season three of the dystopian drama with its move to Netflix, where it debuts next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":350,"featured_media":6678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[1323,1324,88],"class_list":["post-6677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-black-mirror","tag-charlie-brooker","tag-netflix","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nExclusive Interview: Charlie Brooker Talks Black Mirror's Move to Netflix - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/exclusive-interview-charlie-brooker-talks-black-mirrors-move-to-netflix\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exclusive Interview: Charlie Brooker Talks Black Mirror's Move to Netflix - 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