Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker addresses episodes being 'too bleak' and how show has changed

If the real world wasn't anxiety inducing enough right now, Black Mirror is back for another round of dystopian horrorscapes to haunt your dreams.

For those of you not too au fait with the series, it all started way back in 2011 with the graphically porcine episode 'The National Anthem', in which the UK's prime minister (Rory Kinnear) is blackmailed into having sex with a pig live on TV in order to save the life of a member of the royal family. So, yeah, that's what we're dealing with here.

Ahead of the release of its seventh season on Netflix today (10 April), LADbible sat down with Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker and executive producer Jessica Rhoades, who explained how and why the show has changed so much over the years and what it tells us about the world we live in today.

"I think one of the things that's interesting about doing this show, is that we're now a sort of vintage show by modern standards," Brooker said of the journey Black Mirror has taken over the years.

"It means because technology is changing and the world around technology is changing, there are ideas that wouldn't have got to me 10 years ago, 14 years ago.

"And also the viewer has got a different experience and has more experience, probably, of sort of dystopian tech seeping into their life.

"So there's thematic things, or there's certain practical things you don't have to explain probably in as much detail as you would have done years ago."

The pace of technological change and the depressingly predictable ways people use these advancements has certainly provided plenty of new material for Brooker over the years.

Brooker said episodes like 'Common People', starring Rashida Jones and Chris O'Dowd, wouldn't have occurred to him back when he started Black Mirror (Netflix)

Black Mirror season seven is something of a return to the 'classic' format of the show with a focus on the disturbing ways people use technology after the previous season ventured into a spot of supernatural horror with the episodes 'Mazey Day' and 'Demon 79'.

Brooker has always been interested in how people are using technology in 'f**ked up' ways rather than simply trying to say that technology itself is bad.

Season seven of Black Mirror comes right out of the gate with a prime example of this with the episode 'Common People', which Brooker said he doesn't think 'would have occurred to me at the start' of Black Mirror.

The episode follows the relationship of Mike (Chris O'Dowd) and Amanda (Rashida Jones), which is thrown into chaos when Amanda suffers a brush with death and the only thing that can keep her alive is a revolutionary but costly treatment.

"I don't think it would have been on my radar because it wasn't really so much a thing in 2011 than when the show began," he told LADbible of the episode's theme of ens**ttification, that marvellous word for that dreadful concept of a once positive thing becoming progressively worse as it goes through more and more changes.

"We tend to go there," Brooker said of Black Mirror not shying away from bleakness, but he does want you to make it to the end of the episodes (Netflix)

As for whether there's anything that's too bleak for Black Mirror, Brooker said it was a case of 'occasionally', but 'not really'.

He said: "I don’t know if you've noticed, but we tend to go there. When we do bleak, we tend to sort of double down on bleak."

Black Mirror executive producer Rhoades said it might 'depend on what else is in the season', as Brooker added that it 'depends on what else is in the particular episode'.

"Certainly, sometimes there's been elements within an episode where you're like, ‘ah, that's just a bit too much, let's take that out’, because we want people to physically make it to the end credits," the show creator said of his series.

It's not all doom and gloom in season seven, there's humour and even romance to be had in some of the episodes, such as 'Hotel Reverie' which stars Emma Corrin and Issa Rae in a recreation of an old romance movie.

In the episode, Rae's character Brandy Friday enters a high tech remake of the love story that expects her to play her part alongside co-star Dorothy (Corrin), a recreation of the original film's star who lived and died years ago.

Corrin explained that in preparing for that episode they 'had to pretend I was in a box' and 'had lived inside four walls for my whole life', with Rae tasked with getting them out of there.

The star said their episode 'says something beautiful about the human need to connect and communicate', but you'll have to watch it and find out exactly what they meant.

Elsewhere, Black Mirror is making its first foray into doing a sequel as the crew from the season four episode 'USS Callister' return for a new episode, and Brooker said he 'wouldn't want to jinx it by saying what', but there are other stories he thinks could possibly be picked up and revisited.

"There's definitely things I've thought about there, we've got a full sequel this season," Brooker said.

"We've got 'USS Callister', and then there's an episode 'Plaything' where I brought back some of the characters from 'Bandersnatch', simply because I love the characters."

'Plaything' star Lewis Gribben and his co-star Josh Finan also chatted to LADbible about their time in that episode.

Gribben and Peter Capaldi play young and older versions of Cameron, who is invited to try a revolutionary new game, and the actor said that while it was 'intimidating' to be sharing a character with such an iconic star as the former Doctor Who lead, he got to inspire Capaldi's performance as he told episode director David Slade: "I think he should just take from me, because I'm the younger version.

"He mimicked my voice, he mimicked the way I spoke, the way I talked, the way I had my shoulders."

Finan said 'hopefully the drama comes out' in what they're doing, and you'll just have to watch to find out exactly what happens.

Season seven of Black Mirror is available to stream now on Netflix.