We’re so ready for the new season of Charlie Brooker‘s near-future allegorical sci-fi series Black Mirror we can taste it in our spit. Like a kid anticipating opening Christmas presents or a hungry dog eyeing a leg of lamb, we can’t wait to tear open the episodes, savor them, devour them, and let them slowly digest in our mind-bellies until we are lulled to disturbing dream-filled sleep. And while we don’t condone peeking on your presents before the day, Brooker has provided a bit of a synopsis for six (6!) of the new Netflix episodes! We discuss now!
Brooker spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the upcoming season — which will hit Netflix on October 21 and will consist of a whopping 12 episodes, nearly double the amount that have been produced prior to the Netflix deal — and gave some SPOILER FREE descriptions. They are as follows:
Nosedive
Bryce Dallas Howard stars as an insecure office worker who obsessively ranks and rates every tiny social interaction. She thinks she’s finally found a way to rank alongside her friend (Alice Eve), one of society’s elites. “Each episode this season is a different genre; this one is a social satire,†Brooker says. “It’s got a creepy serenity to it and won’t be what people expect.”
San Junipero
Brooker set himself a challenge for this one, making a show about the future but setting it in the 1980s, where Mackenzie Davis and Gugu Mbatha-Raw are recent arrivals at a sexy beach community. “It’s kind of an ‘80s coming-of-age drama with a Black Mirror undertow,” he says. “Also, when Netflix picked us up, people were going, ‘Oh that means [the show is] going to be Americanized.’ I thought it would be a funny to f–k with those people by literally writing an episode set in California.”
Shut Up and Dance
This, Brooker says, will be an episode like the series’ first, “The National Anthem” — a present-day thriller without any sci-fi elements. It it, a withdrawn 19-year-old (Alex Lawther) stumbles into an online trap and is quickly forced into an uneasy alliance with shifty man (Jerome Flynn) who are both at the mercy of persons unknown. “A kitchen sink nightmarish thriller,†he says.
Men Against Fire
This one seems the most horror-based of the first batch. A soldier is sent overseas to protect a group of frightened villagers from an outbreak of feral mutants. The hope is that new technology will be able to save them. “It stemmed slightly from thinking about drone attacks and how technology is alternating the face of warfare, but it’s not about drones,” Brooker says. “It’s almost like The Walking Dead.”
Playtest
Brooker revisits his former life as a video game journalist with this episode. A jet-setting adventurer goes to Britain and hooks up with a woman (Killjoys‘ Hannah John-Kamen) and tests the latest in high-tech video games: “a device as mind-bendingly sophisticated as it is terrifying.” Directed by Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane), Brooker notes, “Dan is fantastic at creating suspenseful and tense mood; this is our Evil Dead 2.” A mighty bold statement, Brooker.
Hated in the Nation
A 90-minute episode inspired by Scandi-Noir thrillers like The Killing in which a police detective (Kelly McDonald) and her nerdy young sidekick have to solve a string of brutal murders with a social media edge. Brooker claims it starts out straight forward and takes “a bizarre turn” as though that isn’t exactly what every episode is like.
These episodes all sound delightfully creepy and full of the kind of stuff that makes us feel upset all the time (for a week or so), which is exactly what we love about Black Mirror. Let us know what you think of these episodes in the comments below!
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Image: Netflix
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
