These Are the (Other) “Horrible Things” Charlie Brooker Almost Included in the ‘Black Mirror’ Season 7 Opener
When Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker wrote “Common People,” about a couple who adopts lifesaving technology only for its subscription model to price them out of life-critical features, “our producer Richard Webb said, ‘That is the most Black Mirror script I’ve ever read,’ ” he says. “The scenes where we had Chris O’Dowd, Rashida Jones and Tracee Ellis Ross together were some of the most fun — where you get the collision of bleak humor with the horrible dystopian situation they’re caught in.”
Brooker had already been thinking about the idea of a person who was clinically dead being kept alive via digital means — “What would happen if your brain was being streamed into your head, and the sort of comic or bleak ramifications of that” — when he came across the concept of “enshittification” and decided to incorporate it into the storyline as commentary on the Rivermind app that Mike (O’Dowd) and Amanda (Jones) sign up for to save her life after she’s diagnosed with a brain tumor. “This writer, Cory Doctorow, coined it, and it’s basically about how almost all services, particularly digital services, degrade over time for the user because they’re all about maximizing growth,” Brooker says of the term. That approach also underscores the observations being made in the episode that the technology of the Rivermind app itself isn’t the problem but rather “the machine around it” (i.e., corporate greed), Brooker says.
Brooker and his writers toyed with various limitations the app could impose on customers, like, “Everything would taste of boiled potatoes unless you pay an extra $70, and because things are geared toward shareholder value and not necessarily in the interests of even the employees or the customers anyway, that is what it is,” he explains. In the interest of time and not repeating concepts they have explored before, Brooker notes, “We ended up cutting out even more horrible things, and it’s still pretty fucking horrible.”
A lot of thought was put into the pricing of the app’s features, Brooker says, noting the cost structure analogy with the U.S. health care system wouldn’t have worked in the U.K., where citizens have free coverage. “Jessica Rhoades, our EP, was citing an article she’d read that said something like the average [American] family is a couple of hundred dollars away from losing the roof over their head or having to make really awful decisions, so it was important that the sums involved didn’t sound immediately absolutely astronomical but clearly add up. As you go up the tiers, they rack up so quickly, you find they’re charging for this, they’re charging for that,” says Brooker. “It also had to feel like why would he would sign up for this in the first place,” he adds of the app’s price points. “[Mike’s] like, ‘I’ll just take on a couple of extra shifts. I can afford this.’ We discover later he has been putting money aside for the baby, but as we see, he ends up having to do all sorts of things to try and raise extra money.”
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Though Mike and Amanda (spoiler alert!) both perish at the end of the “Common People” episode, Brooker isn’t ruling out the possibility of revisiting the Rivermind universe in future seasons, particularly after having introduced the first Black Mirror sequel in season seven’s “USS Callister: Into Infinity.” “I would never want to say no. I love a fake advert in something, and that was the closest I’ve gotten to actually having a dystopian, blackly comedic advert in the middle of Black Mirror,” he says. “There’s a lot more you could do with that technology, so I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. Gaynor is still around — presumably still working for Rivermind — and we do love an Easter egg in the show.”
When first attempting a script, Brooker thought he’d write a “lighthearted episode about somebody who advertises things all the time,” he says. Yet as the idea broadened and grew increasingly darker, there was another restriction that he mulled over, related to the advertisements Amanda begins verbalizing as a result of her lower subscription tier. “There was originally a whole privacy layer in there that I stripped because it was a little too similar to a bit in ‘Joan Is Awful,’ which was an episode last season that Ally Pankiw also directed. Originally, there was a line [in the script] where they’re asking about how the commercials are suited to the situation they’re in, and they’re realizing that it’s monitoring everything they’re saying and doing. It’s watching her in the classroom, watching them in bed together. They’ve got no privacy anymore, and you can opt out of that, but that costs them $2,000 a month, or whatever it was,” Brooker explains.
When it comes to Gaynor (Ross), Brooker says, she “wouldn’t see herself as a villain. We’re told early on that she’s using this service herself, then there’s a sort of kicker near the end that the reason why she’s kind of nonchalant and laid-back is that it’s one of the pluses of being on a premium tier.” As such, Brooker notes the character offers up the “bleak humor” that characterizes the series overall and gets back to that “OG Black Mirror-ness.” “Gaynor speaks in this horribly matter-of-fact corporate way with a smile,” he adds, “and there’s something about that, because you enjoy her even though she’s horrible. The way she delivers some of the lines is hilarious, even though what she’s describing, obviously, is kind of monstrous.”
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
