Charlie Brooker

Hugh Grant almost played PM in The National Anthem

Hugh Grant, who played the Prime Minister in Love Actually, almost played Black Mirror's Prime Minister who has sex with a pig.

Many had high hopes when they saw the name Charlie Brooker linked to Netflix and a review of 2020: hopes of a Screenwipe of sorts, with frissons of Black Mirror. What we got in Death To 2020 was what some might call politely a salmagundi; what others might describe rudely as a mess.

One problem was that, for all the talent involved, there was no Charlie Brooker talking us drily through. It was as if a Netflix algorithm had somehow conflated this with the US show Saturday Night Live, which, through repetitively pointing out weekly since 2016 that Donald Trump was thick and nasty, famously brought about his 2018 impeachment and subsequent bell tower death.

Lisa Kudrow, Samuel L Jackson, Hugh Grant - all terrific, given the bad lines they were given. Kudrow's spokesperson was funny the first time she challenged with an airy defiance the existence of recorded facts. By the seventh repetition of exactly the same gag... not so much. How many ways are there to say that Joe Biden is "old", and how screamingly amusing will that saying-so of an established fact ever have been in the first place? After the year we wish never was, the recap we wish never was.

Death To 2020 review

Charlie Brooker's year-in-review Netflix special should have been an open goal. Instead, says Ed Cumming, it doesn't know whether it is playing to an American audience or a British one, and pleases neither.

Death To 2020: mockumentary proves comedy's demise

2020 has been a brutal year, but one that offers huge potential for humor. However, Death To 2020's tepid, establishment-friendly take on the past 12 months feels like the final nail in the coffin of true comedy.

Death To 2020 review

Of course, some will argue that we shouldn't be laughing at the horror-show in which we're all so inextricably mired, but I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to. Chances are, you will to.

Review: Death To 2020

Once people realise Death To 2020 isn't actually very Black Mirror-esque at all, but rather just a subpar year-in-review show - in the vein of Last Week Tonight only less sharp - I'm not sure why anybody would seek out this special.

Review: Death To 2020

It fast became a cliché to say that the spiralling dystopia of 2020 was like an out-of-control episode of Black Mirror. So it was probably inevitable that Charlie Brooker would be called upon to offer a satirical summary of the momentously awful 12 months, especially given his track record with the Wipe series for the BBC. The result is a wry, often bleakly amusing look at the year, albeit without the astringent personal bite Brooker normally brings to his year-end round-ups.

Review: Death To 2020

Perhaps it's a case of too many cooks, with eighteen writers listed in the credits, and the desire to reach a much bigger audience given that the likes of Jackson, Jones, Grant and Milioti were all involved, but the satire felt bleakly blunted.

Death To 2020: Interview with Brooker & Jones

Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones tackle the "nonsense and chaos and horribleness" of 2020 with a star-studded mockumentary filmed under pandemic-era protocols. "We hope to give people a sort of cathartic exorcism of the year that was 2020," Jones tells The Hollywood Reporter.