Charlie Brooker and his dystopian anthology series Black Mirror have never been shy about having a little nibble on the hand that feeds, but the new trailer for season six of the Netflix show suggests that this time it’s going to bite that hand off, then probably keep chomping until it hits the elbow.
The new season brings us, as the trailer has it, “five new films, five new worlds, five new realities” from Brooker and friends. That includes a spoof of Netflix itself called Streamberry – complete with the streamer’s signature ‘tudum’ sting and a prestige political doc calling back to Series 1’s pig-porking PM Michael Callow – which drops a new show called Joan is Awful. The twist: Joan (Annie Murphy) is watching with her partner, had no idea it was being made, and is now watching her real life being turned into a hit show starring Salma Hayek. “She even has your hair,” Joan’s boyfriend says. Naturally, it all goes sideways. Watch the new trailer here:
Elsewhere there’s ‘Loch Henry’, about a documentary-making couple who get drawn into getting to the bottom of a series of abductions in Scotland, and Aaron Paul returns after his cameo in ‘USS Callister’ for a full space adventure in an alternate 1969 where space seems to have made his crewmate go off the deep end in ‘Beyond the Sea’.
Then in ‘Mazey Day’, an A-lister is booted out of a high profile fantasy show and paparazzi go on the hunt for the first image of her since the fall-out – “These assholes would kill themselves if we didn’t take their picture,” says one – as she tries to get to grips with the aftermath of a hit-and-run. And under the very appealingly video-nasty-ish banner of ‘Red Mirror Presents’, there’s ‘Demon 79’ with We Are Lady Parts’ Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu, where Vasan’s sales assistant has to keep doing terrible things to stop even more terrible things happening.
One image from the trailer doesn’t obviously fit into any of those five stories. In front of a banner reading “Taking Britain Back” – where have we heard that before? – and a logo we first saw back in the second season episode ‘White Bear’, there’s a plausible-looking politician playing to a huge arena of people. Hmm. As usual, there’s not much point trying to tell where Black Mirror’s headed – but it’s going to get dark.
Black Mirror Season 6 is streaming on Netflix from 15 June.