Charlie Brooker: If anything from Black Mirror season four comes true the world is really screwed
The creator of Netflix's dark sci-fi serial warns viewers what to expect in season four – and tries to explain his peculiar powers of prediction...
Charlie Brooker definitely has something of the Mystic Meg about him. Through his Netflix series Black Mirror, he's eerily predicted all sorts of technological advances – as well as an incident with a certain pig.
However, speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, Brooker said he believes that the technology, plots and storylines for season four of the dystopian drama are “quite far out”. Basically, he doesn’t think any of them will come true.
That said, he's said that before and been proved wrong, and there are always news stories that make him think twice about the stories he has already written.
"Weirdly there was one news story I read the other day that I thought ‘Oh, how does that reflect on an episode we’ve already finished shooting?’" he said. "There was some new discovery made. Hopefully not, but then when writing them I never think any of these are going to come true, and then it seems like some of them do.
“Which is a bit worrisome, generally,” he continued. “For this coming season they’re quite far out there so I don’t envisage that being a problem. Although if that does happen the world is really f***ed... well, the world is really f***ed”, so we'll see."
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Watch the full video interview below to hear how Black Mirror season four is progressing – but be warned, it contains some swearing
Speaking of predictions coming true, we couldn't not ask Brooker about The Waldo Moment. Specifically, the fact that everybody referenced the episode during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and subsequent election.
“It was both gratifying that people picked up on that and terrifying. We didn’t go that far in the story," Brooker said.
“In our episode Waldo comes second I think, or third. But he doesn’t win. I was worried that Donald Trump was going to win partly based on the number of people going, ‘He’s got no chance’. It seemed like a really bad case of people overstating – dismissing this as a possibility.
“And I think when I wrote that episode I was clearly being influenced by a general mood that was going on at the time. I don’t think we really predicted anything so much as reacted to something that was already in the ether.”
So, one more prediction – how much longer can Black Mirror go on for? Is season five a possibility?
"I'd like to think we can carry on doing them as long as the world lasts," he says. "So, probably another six months?"
And on that cheery thought... Black Mirror season 4 is expected to stream on Netflix later this year
