Charlie Brooker's BLACK MIRROR

Interesting to hear how the Americans on here saw that: for me it was insufferable, bordering on the unwatchable.

It just degenerated into shouting. It wasn't scary or suspenseful, just annoying.

just watched ep 5, the 'point' could not have been stretched any thinner over what seemed like about 3 hours

Bit late to the party but I'm enjoying the series so far; probably a lot more than the previous series'. Agree that some of the social commentary is a bit heavy-handed (that zombie one) but the overall execution is enough to keep me interested.

I actually really liked 'Playtime'. Schlocky sci-horror fun in spoonfuls. Wasn't anything THAT new, concept-wise (Red Dwarf did the same storyline decades ago) but still pretty exciting and if the lead was a bit obnoxious, I figured that was sort of the point.

In "San Junipero," I annoyed my wife by continually asking about how they got the music cleared.

I mean, I've watched a fair amount of television. Recognizable songs are comparatively rare, both for rights reasons and because if you go to the trouble of getting one song in there, you tend to use it as much as you can, because once you've paid for it you can use it as much as you like, so why not? There was a CSI ep that had that modal cover "Mad World" in there and used it to death.

Anyway this one Black Mirror episode had like 20 songs I know by heart from my youth, and some of them were only in there for a few seconds. Not obscure b-sides and album cuts. Wishing Well? Girlfriend in a Coma? Walk Like an Egyptian? Lean on Me? I Need You Tonight? Heart and Soul? Addicted to Love?

My question is, WTF? Did they secure rights to ALL this 80s and 90s material (at ludicrous expense) only to use it just for scene-setting and to establish time period?

Or is there some other kind of deal where they were able to negotiate for exactly three seconds of "I Need You Tonight"? In the way that an actress can negotiate for sideboob and butt crack but no pubes (or whatever)?

Sorry I do not know a thing about this side of things. But I do see the effect of like a hundred other shows/movies not even being able to hum a few bars of a Beatles track, and pretty much every show/movie for 35 years studiously avoiding "Happy Birthday," even when it made complete sense for the story.

And yet here's an episode of reasonably well-known show gratuitously dripping with famous songs. What's up with that?

Netflix has a fucking gigantic war chest and has been negotiating even more gigantic sums of debt to fund their new shows.

Someone should tell the people who made Vinyl and The Get-Down that they could have used a LOT more authentic period-appropriate music, then.

Ya Mad Puffin, iirc music rights are sold in blocks of 30 seconds or sold as "any 30 seconds" then over that you'll pay rights for the full track. Also I think it's either easier to clear or you don't need to clear if you're only using 30 seconds or less. It's why if you watch a programme like masterchef there's loads of recognisable tracks but only for short bursts then it will quickly change to another track after a bit of narration.

Thanks jed_, that is helpful.

Did the rules change recently? Because I definitely think TV shows have generally been more cautious. Maybe it's just that my watching pattern has skewed my perceptions, but I'm talking about 40+ years of watching television. I'm old. The number of songs I recognized could have been counted on two partially maimed hands up to this point, and now here's one episode with like 20.

Now I wish I were in television so I could make a time-travel show where they just used 29 seconds of each year's #1 hit.

That episode reminded me of how great "Need You Tonight" is!

it made me remember how nice love can be

I'm dumb so I didn't get the end of Men Against Fire. Was he decomissioned? What was the point of that?

That episode reminded me of how great "Need You Tonight" is!

― Acting Crazy (Instrumental) (jed_), Thursday, 10 November 2016 18:57 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

Xp I think he chose to continue with the military, but was home on leave. It showed that even his leave was augmented by the device in him, and his life back home was kind of nothing

I think Shut Up and Dance would've been funnier/darker if he had got into all that shit just for wanking over normal porn.

BROOKER KLAXON

he's hosting Have I Got News For You this evening, get in.

How will the Coren-Mitchell''s pay the rent this week?

San Junipero was a good episode but I didn't find it as emotionally resonant as some people who described it to me

Charlie Brooker just hosted the first post US election edition of Have I Got News For You. Just thought I'd let you know if you want to check it out.

Finally finished these, was sort of dreading an extra-long one (Hated in the Nation) but it was one of the better ones (while actually watching it) with an actual story and everything. lol @ 'what if phones but too much'

@ Ye Mad Puffin, I know the music supervisor on this show and I'll ask him!

Hated In The Nation was great but I didn't really understand the ending. did I miss some bigger point or was it just supposed to cut off like that?

yeah I didn't get it either, does she just nab/kill him? wanted a lot more out of Hated in the Nation considering how many people here and elsewhere said it was their favorite. Didn't come close to Nosedive, Playtest, or San Junipero for me.

I think the implication is she kills him. it seems unlikely for a rogue agent in another country to be able to legally apprehend him, but maybe it's a secret operation. I liked that episode but it felt like there weren't enough ideas to sustain an hour and a half

it just felt like an empty procedural without any of the really fucking disturbing shit in the other episodes. the whole bit about the bee burrowing into the pain center of the brain was the only thing that made my skin crawl, while playtest continues to give me nightmares nearly a month later

I really wish they had pursued the columnist soaking up everyone insulting and threatening her online with a glass of wine and a smile on her face. like i said, it was clogged with plot and it's not sticking with me like the others. praise for it here is baffling

xp overall i enjoyed the whole series but felt that some ideas didn't quite get explored enough; or they felt like genre-exercises that didn't really bring much new to the table ('Play Test' was like a Red Dwarf plotline meets a fairly run-of-the-mill jump-horror).
So, what if phones but not enough?

What was it about PlayTest that disturbed some of you so much? Surely not the bog-awful Quake-style giant spiderface thing?

(going mad, thats a whole nother kettle of creep).

the concept of the layered nightmare and the fact that the whole thing took place in .004 seconds. the idea that the stimulus was so potent that it blew his brain out. the last scene when we finally reach reality and the VR people very calmly and casually assess the situation and throw him in a bodybag.

Well yeah ok that was quite unnerving.

We watched that one last night and, yeah, cool dream-within-a-dream horror flick. Had me jumping like TV shows never do.

What I was most taken by, is the aesthetic theyve always had in the series of stuff being just far enough in the future that it is all still familiar, but has a glossy sheen of "lots more futuristic". My particular fave on that front was the self driving car in Hated in the Nation.

As in: shit, it never occurred to me that if cars drove themselves we wouldnt even need to all sit forward-facing!

Playtest scared the hell out of me, mostly the idea you can't trust your senses. other TV/movies have done this idea, but I thought BM executed it well. I like that it starts with obvious stuff like the spider, then transitions to stuff where you wonder if it's possible with just sight and sound, and ends with all the rules gone. and yeah, that it all happened so quickly is scary too. a lot of my greatest fears are similar to stuff that happened in this episode, fittingly

Somebody - I think Mercedes - has a concept car where the seats face each other like that.

I seriously covet the drafting table in "Be Right Back."

the fact that the whole thing took place in .004 seconds

I thought this really undermined it. Too much of a leap to imagine a consciousness being able to experience/process all of that in so little time. Such a compressed duration has no meaning.

If there's a company in England that's regularly killing shaggy selfish hippie Boho-American tourists, all I can say is good luck to them, and I wish them success. They should get a grant or something.

I thought this really undermined it. Too much of a leap to imagine a consciousness being able to experience/process all of that in so little time. Such a compressed duration has no meaning.

― nashwan, Tuesday, November 15, 2016 1:28 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Stuff similar to that happens to me in dreams all the time. Like when I look at the clock, doze off, have what feels like an epic dream, wake up and it's only 5 minutes later.

One of my favourite things about 'Playtest' was that it was an incredibly elongated setup for a groanworthy punchline. (And that's not sarcasm, btw, I genuinely loved that about it.)

Does anyone know if netflix pushed for it to be more American-centred this time, btw? I can see why, I guess, if they're trying to expand the audience, but I found the number of US episodes a little grating.

glad to hear you loved that groaner of a punchline too, emil.y

the next best part was that none of it was part of the video game simulation -- they never had a chance to start it, all of what he experienced was his brain severely fucking up when the cell phone interfered with the startup

So the lesson is phones are bad? But if you call your mom often enough, phones are good.

It was a little hard to pull a coherent lesson/message/commentary, I agree. The relationship between the protagonist and his Mum was interesting: it was remarkably blank, given how central it was to the plot. Any time I've avoided my Mum, it has been because I've actually been angry with her about something she did or felt I needed to distance myself. The only reason this guy gave was that he had trouble connecting with her or getting along with her. Even in his subconscious, she only ever really appeared as a source of guilt, with no real independent personality or specific memories attached to her.

The main reason the guy gave was that he and his mom never really connected after his dad died! That's pretty huge.

As in his father's death was recent and he didn't know how to relate to her anymore so he left on this extended, directionless trip.

It just seems a little vague, which is fair enough, given that he was talking to a Tinder hookup, but I might have thought that more would at least come out in his subconscious exploration. Not saying it was a failing per se, just that it was striking.
xp It didn't seem like he had related to her much before, either, though.

So the lesson is phones are bad? But if you call your mom often enough, phones are good.

― marzipandemonium (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, November 15, 2016 3:11 PM (one hour ago)

This is one of the things I hate about Black Mirror commentary - why do you think there is a lesson at all? Not all works of fiction need to be parables.

I mean, if I was going to take away any lesson from that episode, it would be "you can make a really enjoyable TV show out of a terrible terrible joke".

tbh I agree and I'm just not seeing the morality angle in a lot of episodes

the main takeaway is generally "whoa that's fucked up" and while I can't have all of my entertainment stand by that template, I appreciate it

oh whoa, i didn't catch that joke at the end! he 'called Mom' as he died. that's fucking sick

Ha, I rewatched for it too.

https://open.spotify.com/user/charliebrooker/playlist/1enamd7IoA2KtAoMxeiINW