Black Mirror’s seventh season premiere, Common People, is a return to form for the show. Tapping into a familiar style of dystopian science fiction, it introduces a married couple (played by Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd) whose lives are turned upside down by a seemingly miraculous new medical technology.
As is usually the case for Black Mirror episodes, this story soon takes a dark turn – in this case providing a grim satire of Silicon Valley’s obsession with subscription services.
After an unexpected brush with death, Jones's character Amanda is rescued by a medical tech startup. But in order for her to maintain a normal quality of life, she and her husband have to keep paying a subscription fee to the company that provided her life-saving treatment. When they fail to pay up, she starts reciting ads like a robot, while her husband takes on increasingly humiliating jobs to make ends meet.
In a recent interview, Black Mirror showrunner Charlie Brooker discussed how he and his writing team brainstormed different ideas to make the episode’s technology as dystopian as possible.
"We ended up cutting out even more horrible things, and it’s still pretty fucking horrible," he told the Hollywood Reporter.
One of his team’s suggestions involved a sadistic punishment for subscribers who failed to pay a premium fee: “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.”
View Green Video on the source websiteIn an earlier version of the script, Rivermind also invaded the main characters’ privacy - another recognisable piece of real-world commentary, inspired by apps that tailor their advertising by surveilling the user’s internet habits.
“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 realising 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.” However Brooker decided to remove this subplot because it was too similar to another Black Mirror episode.
Celebrating this episode’s combination of “bleak humour” and dystopian world-building, Brooker teased the possibility of a sequel or spinoff.
While Common People’s lead characters obviously won’t return for a new story, the Rivermind technology offers plenty of scope for further exploration. And after this season’s return to the Star Trek-inspired world of the USS Callister, Black Mirror has now set a precedent for sequel episodes.
Black Mirror seasons 1-7 are available to stream on Netflix now.
Check out more of our Sci-fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
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