Black Mirror’s Pilot Was Actually Inspired By This Gross British Reality Show

“Black Mirror”, the anthology series by Charlie Brooker on the danger of technology which was originally broadcast on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom Before jumping the ship to Netflixis a deeply disturbing spectacle of any metric. That said, it really starts, Really A disturbing note with the episode “The National Anthem”, in which Prime Minister Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear) learns that Princess Susannah (Lydia Wilson), member of the British royal family, is hostage. Susannah’s kidnapper forces the princess to record a video where she describes the condition for her survival and release: that Callow has sex at the end with a pig on live television. Although Callow and his team try to thwart the kidnapper (hiring an adult movie star to stand as a Callow as she tries to find the princess), he ultimately interprets the act – only to discover that the princess was released before even starting.

So where in the world Brooker and her colleague, executive producer Annabel Jones had the twisted idea for this? According to the book “Inside Black Mirror”, released in 2018 and written by Brooker, Jones and Jason Arnopp, it was inspired by the British reality series “I’m a Celebrity … Sit me from here!” In this program, the British television presenters Ant and Dec look at that celebrities play deeply humiliating acts in the name of the survival of a passage in the jungle, so it is easy to see how Brooker had the idea (in a way).

“”I looked at someone like Peter Andre – I don’t remember who – but they were absolutely terrified, almost in tears, trembling, crying, sweating, “recalls Brooker in the book.” They had to do something like eating an asshole with an eye globe pushed in it, which was rolled in a sh * t dog while a spider cracked on the roof of their mouths. They gagged and there was something to see live. I thought: “I don’t like it, what F ** K is horrible!” At one point, he cut Ant and Dec and I thought that Dec looked infinitely sad, as if he had looked at the abyss. “”

“‘The national anthem “was a question of humiliation and the appetite of the public for humiliation,” added Jones:

“The public will celebrate anyone if he is ready to humble himself for public entertainment. The celebrities had started to achieve this: some were going” I am a celebrity.. For redemption, and others to try to extend their careers. But it was not only celebrities – when [‘Dead Set,’ Brooker’s previous series about a zombie apocalypse] Was in the air, Brian Paddick was in the jungle. The previous year, he was deputy assistant to the deputy commissioner at the Metropolitan Police Service and to be the mayor of London! How crazy is it? “”

I am not a showrunner, and I am not in charge of anything to do with episode orders … But if I am honest, I think that “the national anthem” was a savage Choice for the very first episode of “Black Mirror”, especially because it has little to do with technology, the main objective of a large part of the rest of the series. (One of the following two episodes of the short first season of the series, “Fifteen million merits” and “all the history of you”, would have been more representative of the program as a whole, in my opinion very humble.) Charlie Brooker, of course, knows, and he said in “Inside Black Mirror” that he intended for viewers to be a little put off by the choice of Premiere.

“The fact that we are starting” Black Mirror “with” The National Anthem “launches a lot of people, perhaps because it makes them quite sick, in a horrible and outgoing way,” sounded Brooker. “There is a nauseating inevitability on this subject. I know that it makes it difficult for some people to recommend the show! Some people simply do not get it, but I consider it funny.

In fact, Brooker said that the impetus of the episode actually came from another series and completely independent, in a way. “I had the idea before it was a very funny episode of ’24’ if Jack Bauer [Kiefer Sutherland’s lead character] was presented with a dilemma of f ** ka pig, “said Brooker.” And then I thought that if you played completely straight, it would be hilarious. But while developing the rhythms of real history, you realize that it would not be very funny. And after doing “dead set”, I was more confident than you could take something absurd but make the tone very straight. “”

That said, the strangest twist of “the national anthem” is that, four years after its dissemination, there was a real scandal involving a British Prime Minister and a pig. No, Really.

Four years after the premiere of “The National Anthem”, in 2015, Charlie Brooker was approached by The guardian To comment on recent titles. Lord Ashcroft had written a biography of the British Prime Minister David Cameron, in which Ashcroft alleged that, during a sort of “initiation ceremony” at the University of Oxford, Cameron “inserted a private part of his anatomy” in the mouth of a dead pig. Brooker, for its part, was naturally horrified that he had accidentally predicted this.

“The first question that people asked me was: I knew something about it? And the answer is no, absolutely not,” Brooker told the point of sale. “I would probably not have bored to write an episode of a fictitious comedy drama if I had known. I would have run by shouting in traffic. It is a complete coincidence, although quite weird.”

“I really wondered for a moment if reality was a simulation, if it only exists to be mistaken. Which is not supposed to appear narcissistic,” he continued. “It’s just a bit of concern.” As Brooker said in “Inside Black Mirror” in 2018, a great inspiration was “I am a celebrity … Get me from here!” But in the interview with The Guardian, Brooker also checked a scandal involving former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a comic strip he read once, and the sad suggestion of Hunter S. Thompson to a political rival in “calling him a pork-f ** Ker” to “do the soundfab * tch deny it”. “”

“In the episode itself,” concluded Brooker, “it should be noted that this does not really damage the Prime Minister in the long term.” Unfortunately for Cameron, this allegation stuck for a long time.

“Black Mirror” is now available on Netflix.