sorry, I’m a real f***ing prick,” says Charlie Brooker, just 30 seconds into our conversation. All I did was ask the self-deprecating satirist, seated beside Black Mirror co-producer Annabel Jones, how the day was going. Jones answered, politely, that she’s exhausted. I replied by saying I’m sorry to hear that.
“Are you?” responded Brooker in a patronizing tone.
“He’s being very f***ing contrarian,” Jones said, sounding – for lack of a better word – exhausted. “Every f***ing thing.”
“Everything everyone is saying I’m going, ‘Really?’,” Brooker grins.
We’re sitting in a Soho hotel making opening pleasantries because the fifth season of Black Mirror is coming to Netflix. Heavily inspired by the Sixties science-fiction anthology series The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror first aired in 2011 on Channel 4. It has been Brooker and Jones’s most successful joint venture yet. Each episode tells a different story about the relationship between humans and technology. More often than not, the results are deeply disturbing.
Yet, despite Black Mirror’s notoriously bleak outlook, the duo behind these grim tales are buoyant company. There are few moments during our conversation when they’re not interrupting one another with undercutting jokes and comments. For instance, I ask what they initially bonded over.
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