Arguably the ultimate dystopian series, Black Mirror – originally aired on Channel 4 in 2011 – has made the terrifying watchable, with the uncomfortable feeling that sticks with you after each episode becoming strangely addictive. Episodes such as The Waldo Moment make it easy to draw comparisons with Trump’s presidential campaign, and later win, showing Brooker’s eerie talent for predicting the future. For those craving an extra dose of Brooker, here we look back at three shows he worked on long before Black Mirror that have more than likely slipped under your radar...

 

Back in 2001, a one-off of the black comedy series Brass Eye aired, controversially named Paedogeddon! and featuring an intriguing cross-section of media stars such as Gary Lineker, Dr Fox and Kate Thornton – don’t worry, we’d forgotten she existed too. The entire 27 minute show is a somewhat bizarre unfolding of the media sensationalising stories and sending the general public into heightened panic. Despite the sensitive subject matter, not many will make it through without a few laughs thanks to the dark humour. The audience can only watch on as the Watchdog-esque show has Chris Morris, the presenter, safely putting his children to bed in a filing cabinet, informs us that paedophiles are genetically more similar to crabs than other humans, and warns us of a dangerous man disguising himself as a school to approach children – “he really is a shit” as one of the presenters tells us.

Interspersed within the studio segments and ridiculous focus groups are pleas from mildly famous people who don’t seem to twig the whole program is a comment on 2001’s – even today’s – media. They gaze pleadingly down the camera and somehow manage to keep a straight face while telling us the dangers of ‘HOECS games’ – that’s Hidden Online Entrapment Control System, in case you hadn’t heard – which have many terrible side effects for children, with stories of a penis-shaped soundwave interfering with children, but perhaps the worst of all being the smell of hammers it leaves on anyone who comes into contact with it.

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The advertisement for new show Paedophile Island (in which 100 children and an ex-offender cohabit an island full of cameras – “what’s going to happen?” asks the voiceover) is an extreme, but not unrealistic, comparison to the endless stream of reality shows airing in 2017: while they do not put children in danger, arguably the adult participants on these shows suffer from stress, panic attacks and sometimes lasting effects on their mental health, illustrating the darker side of reality television. The show ends with the unfortunate news that a man named Peter Phile has been attacked; a fitting end to the offbeat mood of this show.

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STAND-OUT LINE: “This is the one thing we didn’t want to happen!” says a spokesman, referring to the colossal mistake made when convicted paedophile Sydney Cook is sent into space supposedly alone for the rest of his life, but it soon transpires that a 8 year old boy is also trapped aboard the vessel.

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Nine years ago, Dead Set aired: a zombie horror series split into five episodes, where housemates and production staff remained isolated in the Big Brother house while a zombie outbreak is happening outside, using the base as a hideout from the chaos ensuing in the real world. Earning BAFTA nominations and rave reviews, the show was a parody of the unidentifiable cartoon characters we see year after year, with most of us unable to decipher any actual differences between them. The show was created by Brooker and aired on Channel 4, the same channel that the original Big Brother was on at the time; a bold move considering the criticisms it makes of the genre of reality television, a common theme within Brooker’s work.

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The slimy, unlikeable Big Brother producer shows his complete disdain for the outside world when he learns their transmission may be shelved for an urgent news program (although he is unaware of the reason why), illustrating the dumbing down of television and the trend of repetitive, staged reality over informative – and potentially life-saving, in this case – broadcasts. Another interesting point to take from this show is how the Big Brother house becomes a hide-out from the impending danger in the form of sprinting zombies, perhaps a metaphor for the shelter from reality these sorts of programs offer for their participants and, to a certain extent, viewers.

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Featuring cameos from Kinga Karolczak, Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace and Brion Belo (real housemates from Big Brother 5, 7 and 8 respectively) – and of course real star of the show, Davina – it perfectly marries the gory zombie attacks with serious comments on our tendency to pay attention to unimportant celebrity ‘news’, in turn burying the real stories.

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STAND-OUT LINE: Pippa, “Is that Davina?” Patrick, “Sort of.”, an exchange between two characters as a response to something we never thought we’d see: Davina McCall as a zombie, splattered in blood and unrecognisable from her usually put-together self.

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Concluding this trio of Brooker gems is the rather dull sounding sitcom Nathan Barley, written of course by Brooker and also Chris Morris, the star of Paedogeddon!. The show’s premise is based around Dan Ashcroft’s frustration with today’s (or 2005’s, when it was filmed) society, penning an article entitled ‘The Rise Of The Idiots’ which unintentionally becomes popular with the exact people it is ridiculing. In the article, Ashcroft writes that these idiots are “oblivious to the paradox of their uniform individuality”, a paradox clearly still present twelve years on, evident in the hipster uniform of vintage Reeboks, oversized jeans and ‘controversial’ slogan tees.

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Ashcroft represents the stereotypical jaded journalist, resentful of the youth of today who surround him at his workplace – magazine, Sugar Ape, which some viewers claim was a parody of titles such as Dazed & Confused and Vice – who he sees as infantile and is clearly insulted at having to work alongside them. In his rant, he refers to these so-called idiots as babbling into “handheld twit-machines”, an eerie prediction seeing as the program aired over a year before Twitter was even launched, yet a common feeling among those who aren’t a fan of the inane, never-ending updates we continue to post on social media. The show as a whole feels very forward-facing and is one that could easily have been made much more recently and, frankly, any show that manages to cast Richard Ayoade, Noel Fielding and Benedict Cumberbatch in one series has to be worth a watch.

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STAND-OUT LINE: “That piece on the rise of the idiots, awesome, totally sums up my credos” Nathan Barley says as he praises Ashcroft’s article, unaware he, and others like him, are the subject of the rant.