Black Mirror

The 12th best programme of 2011 according to the Radio Times.

The second and third of Charlie Brooker's techno-fables were provocative and strange; but the first, "The National Anthem", was extraordinary, the edgiest, most zeitgeisty TV fiction all year. Tackling the mob mentality of "the online hive-mind", Brooker imagined a prime minister challenged via YouTube to have broadcast sex with a pig, or see a kidnapped princess die. It wasn't just the warped premise that was so powerful, it was the way politicians were shown to be at the mercy of social media and comment boards. Beautifully played, it was deliciously black and thought-provoking. And very funny.

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 stuns once more with Cowellian nightmare

Black Mirror has continued to dumbfound viewers with its latest episode "15 Milllion Merits", which presented a dystopian world that could only be escaped via an X Factor-style talent show.

The weekend's viewing: Black Mirror, Sun, Channel 4

I can't remember whether I said something cynical when Channel 4 promised that it would divert the river of money it poured into Big Brother to irrigate original, one-off dramas, but if I did, may I offer a cautious apology with regards to Black Mirror. It was beautifully realised, with numerous tart little touches in the design, and nicely performed too.

Black Mirror - "Fifteen Million Merits"

Clever, astute, passionate, rewarding and human. Black Mirror's two-for-two, with one more in the pipeline...

15 Million Merits but the script ain't one

Charlie Brooker and Konnie Huq get dark on the second installment of Black Mirror, but was she just there to fellate him while he banged this out?

Black Mirror: 15 Million Merits review

15 Million Merits held a black mirror up to everyone watching, achieving a huge amount in just over an hour.

Nauseous reaction to a joke-free satire

For my part, mild amusement turned first to distaste and then to nausea. No doubt Charlie Brooker would say this is precisely the reaction he was after..

Black Mirror, on a full week ago today but I insist on mentioning it, was brilliant. You couldn't get further away, for the next two Sunday nights, from Downton. Thank God. Rory Kinnear, as the PM who had to (after almost the most deranged twist yet in the mind of writer Charlie Brooker, what fun he must have had in the three minutes after thinking of it) - there's no way round this, "shag a pig on live TV to save the life of the kidnapped princess" and director Otto Bathurst somehow imbued the dreadful, dreadful act with... dignity. Stoicism, then, or a kind of elevated bathos. The whole thing, perfectly shot and acted, said a lot about Twitter and the cyberspace "hive mind", but it said more, near the end, about humanity.

This gloriously mad premise had, of course, the world wanting to watch. London's streets were emptier than in 28 Days Later: everyone was about to watch the PM... do... a pig, on live TV, to order, to save a life. We saw the glee-keen audiences, the pubs and hospitals, fail as the hour of his act chugged on. Heads were turned, hands thrown to eyes. Laughter turned to tears. Twitter-glee turned to shame, just for watching, for having wanted so much to watch. People remembered they were people, not perennial gossipy spectators on life. For something that was ostensibly about kidnapping, execution, pig-shagging and focus-group polls, it was strangely life-affirming. And very quietly, very wisely, very funny.

Just as The X Factor departs our screens, Channel 4 dances on its grave with this poison-pen satire. Written by Charlie Brooker and Konnie Huq (his wife of 16 months), it imagines a depressing future where our hero Bing (Daniel Kaluuya) is one of millions who ride exercise bikes in gyms all day while watching an X Factor-ish talent show called Hot Shot.

It's a resoundingly bleak world they've created: people live in cells with walls of interactive video screens playing ads you must pay to avoid; everyone eats from vending machines; and everyone wears grey tracksuits, unless they commit the crime of getting fat, in which case they wear yellow smocks and appear on a brutal game show called Botherguts.

Bing's dreary existence is lightened when he meets beautiful Abi (Jessica Brown Findlay from Downton Abbey) and sees a way out of the drudgery for her, via a place on Hot Shot. The story evolves (very slowly, mind you) as a haunting allegory about the way TV exploits and humiliates us, and the production design is superbly grim. Shame the targets feel big and easy.