Lindsay Duncan

Less hysterical than the first in this revival series (I can live without Patsy's mirthless workmates and an egregiously OTT Bubble), this second serving dishes up some camp froth.

"Sort of singer" Emma Bunton and Lulu guest-star, while staggering on set with a massive wig and smoky French accent is Lindsay Duncan as film star Jeanne Durand. The effect is stunning: think Faye Dunaway essaying Marlene Dietrich. Jeanne wants to sing, Eddy has booked the Albert Hall, but nothing comes out of the blessed chanteuse's mouth. What to do?

In this secular age for the great god TV with its flock now fragmented, Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror dared to show streets that had been deserted for the goggle-box. But if you missed his satire you'll probably never guess the must-see: the Prime Minister having sex with a pig, to comply with kidnap demands and save a princess. We didn't see the actual act - not even Channel 4 could show that - though we got to watch other people watching: in pubs, on hospital wards, home alone, and in the corridors of power. Lindsay Duncan, who once stalked the corridors televisually as Maggie Thatcher, played the PM's press secretary; Alex MacQueen and Justin Edwards, who once stalked them in The Thick of It as, respectively, the baldy blue-sky thinker and the blinky-eyed Newsnight nutter, were in there, too. This was Black Mirror's first problem: these familiar faces didn't serve as reassurance when dealing with such shocking subject matter, they simply reminded you of programmes which were funnier, better.

Its second problem was believability, or lack of. Not the belief that such a scenario could play out, pig and all, but the one that the cops could be so stupid as to accept without checking that the severed finger delivered to the news network did in fact belong to the princess (it was fat and obviously a man's). For a story to shoot off into such flights of fancy, it first needs to have covered a few of the basics.

The satire, though, was good. Brooker is a sharp observer of the world whizzing round him, and being spun in every sense - where a government thinks it can conceal in the time-honoured way only for a little lad with a smartphone already to know everything, forcing a No 10 aide to concede: "It's trending on Twitter." And where a female journalist desperate for a scoop will ping photos of herself in the style of Ashley Cole to a government underling who'll blow what's left of national security on the issue because he's desperate for a shag.

Not a complete failure, then, and I liked the PM''first response to the kidnapping ("What do they want? Money, release a jihadi, save the f***ing libraries?"). I also liked the idea that a jobbing porn actor might be roped in to play the premier (that this fellow would be on some "By appointment to..." file). But much as I wanted to see Michael Callow with his SamCam deadringer wife as our current leader, I couldn't. That's no reflection on Rory Kinnear who was his usual brilliant self. Whatever else he does in his career, he'll always be answering questions about this.

Black Mirror had plenty to say about technology as force for evil. The first of three satirical dramas by Charlie Brooker, National Anthem played out like a psychotic episode of Spooks. There was the same clipped urgency as officials strode down corridors, the same fight against a fundamentalist deadline and the same ripple effect as ordinary citizens were caught up in the crisis. It was only the nature of the threat - a kidnapped princess and a YouTube ransom note that demanded that the Prime Minister commit an obscene act with a pig live on TV - which hinted that we were in the hands of a rather more twisted storyteller.

Familiar territory to Newswipe fans, this was a what-if scenario spiralled to its darkest, most paranoid conclusion. Brooker has named The Twilight Zone as an influence but you might throw in Brass Eye and The Thick of It, too. Rory Kinnear and Lindsay Duncan were brilliant as the PM and his Home Secretary, delivering absurd lines with poker faces. It was, perhaps, a little over-egged, waging war on everything from the press and politics, to Twitter, the Turner Prize and the Royal Wedding but you couldn't fault its bilious verve.

We all know that Charlie Brooker is one hell of a columnist and critic, but he's also barely put a foot wrong when it comes to fiction. Sitcom Nathan Barley - which satirised Hoxton media twits - was not, it's fair to say, a critical success, but one of the main complaints was that it satirised something that was already out of date. If anything, it now feels ahead of its time; I for one would love to see what Ashcroft makes of the Twitterati.

Dead Set (zombies in the Big Brother house) fared rather better, and now there's The National Anthem, the first of a three part mini-series of Twilight Zone-inspired sci-fi satires called Black Mirror. This has been hugely lauded, and rightly so - well cast, well written and with a premise to make your stomach turn, it was something genuinely different from the genuinely different mind of Mr Brooker.

There were a few funny lines along the way (I loved the TV news editor telling his graphics guys to "keep it functional, no Peppa Pig") but this was no comedy; indeed it was played dead straight by the excellent cast which included Rory Kinnear, Lindsay Duncan and Tom Goodman-Hill. And the reaction to the bizarre ransom demand on social networks, on TV and in homes around the country was pitched perfectly - outrage, disgust, jokes and, ultimately, morbid fascination.

If anything, it was all too real for 45 minutes to carry off the "denouement", shall we call it. Every other element of this drama was so realistic that for the PM to actually go through with it for the sake of public opinion...? It was a bit too much to take, in a couple of senses. But in the main, The National Anthem is to be applauded: brave, well-made, and it made its point clearly, concisely and very creatively.

In his preview of Black Mirror (Channel 4), Charlie Brooker offered The Twilight Zone as one of the key influences for his new Sunday night dramas. To the untrained eye, the first of them, National Anthem, looked suspiciously like political satire - and a very superior one - rather than a sci-fi vision of technology's power to distort the world. All the gadgetry seemed only too familiar and the voyeurism all too credible: there's more dystopia in an episode of Spooks.

Rather less credible was the premise in which we were asked to believe, that Princess Susannah - think Kate Middleton - had been abducted and that the kidnappers had threatened to kill her unless the prime minister - think David Cameron: really, please do, as you'll never be able to take him at all seriously again - had sex with a pig live on television. As it emerged right at the end that the kidnap was a piece of performance art by a Turner prize-winner, plausibility was further stretched to breaking point. Could you picture Tracey Emin holding up a police escort and abducting Kate? Or that no one would notice that the severed finger came from a man, not a woman?

Yet none of this really seemed to matter, as good satire often lies as much in the fun you have along the way as in the absurdity of the set-up. And where this scored heavily was in the way everything was played as near-straight drama. There was an inexorability about Rory Kinnear as a PM tortured by focus groups and Twitter stats, whose decision to fall on his pork sword is ultimately driven by how he will be perceived in the ratings, that was both touching and funny. And Lindsay Duncan's understated press secretary - no Malcolm Tucker she - was just a delight. "Don't get it over too quickly, sir," she advised, as the PM prepared for the performance of his life. "Otherwise, the public will think you are enjoying it rather too much." Brilliant.

Brooker is no shrinking violet - though he did rather skate around the bio-mechanics of getting a hard-on in the presence of a pig, so either he has some taste boundaries after all or inside knowledge of politicians' attraction to the trough - so naturally the PM was not spared closing his eyes and thinking of the polls. In so doing, he lost the love of his wife and gained the sympathy of the nation. So no getting any bright copycat ideas, anyone. Imagine having to feel sorry for Cameron.