Netflix Releases Black Mirror Season 4 Teaser, Cast & Episode Info
One of the most daring shows on television is returning for its fourth season, the techno-paranoia mind-blower Black Mirror. When we interviewed Black Mirror creator Charlie Booker and executive producer Annabel Jones, the latter told us that the series’ one-and-done approach (each episode is a stand-alone universe unto itself) was pure “lunacy,” but added that by doing each episode as a one-off 50-minute film, “we’re able to take an idea and blow it up within that one episode and not have to worry about creating an arc that sustains for multiple seasons…it’s very liberating. You can be more idea-driven.”
Few shows on television dive so fearlessly, and relentlessly, into our fears and anxieties in real life and twist them into riveting narratives. Just look at season 3’s wide array of terrifying conceits that seemed to not only pull from our actual lives, but in some cases, predict them. As our writer Hugh Hart pointed out in his interview with Booker and Jones, “The show’s inaugural 2011 episode ‘The National Anthem,’ for example, shocked viewers with its seemingly outlandish story of a British prime minister forced to fornicate on live television with a pig. A few months later, a biography alleged that UK prime minister David Cameron once had sexual relations with a pig at as part of an Oxford University hazing ritual. A season 3’s episode ‘Hated In The Nation’ imagined attacks by remote-controlled drone bees just a few weeks before Japanese scientists announced the development of similar “Autonomous Drone Insects.”
Netflix announced the fourth season’s cast and title teaser at the Edinburgh Film Festival, as well as this teaser, giving us a glimpse of what we can expect. Jodie Foster directs the season premiere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH85obU350E
Season 4:
“Arkangel”
Cast: Rosemarie Dewitt (La La Land, Mad Men), Brenna Harding (A Place to Call Home), Owen Teague (Bloodline)
Director: Jodie Foster
Written by: Charlie Brooker
“USS Callister”
Cast: Jesse Plemons (Black Mass, Fargo), Cristin Milioti (The Wolf of Wall Street, Fargo), Jimmi Simpson (Westworld, House of Cards), Michaela Coel (Chewing Gum, Monsters: Dark Continent)
Director: Toby Haynes (Dr Who, Sherlock)
Written By: Charlie Brooker & William Bridges
“Crocodile”
Cast: Andrea Riseborough (Birdman, Bloodline), Andrew Gower (Outlander), Kiran Sonia Sawar (Murdered By My Father)
Director: John Hillcoat (Triple Nine, Lawless)
Written By: Charlie Brooker
“Hang the DJ”
Cast: Georgina Campbell (Flowers, Broadchurch), Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders, Green Room), George Blagden (Versailles, Vikings)
Director: Tim Van Patten (The Sopranos, Game of Thrones)
Written By: Charlie Brooker
“Metalhead”
Cast: Maxine Peake (The Theory Of Everything, The Village), Jake Davies (The Missing, A Brilliant Young Mind), Clint Dyer (Hope Springs)
Director: David Slade (Hannibal, American Gods)
Written By: Charlie Brooker
“Black Museum”
Cast: Douglas Hodge (The Night Manager, Catastrophe), Letitia Wright (Humans, Ready Player One), Babs Olusanmokun (Roots, The Defenders)
Director: Colm McCarthy
Written By: Charlie Brooker
Featured image: Bryce Dallas Howard in Black Mirror, season 3 episode “Nosedive.” Photo by David Dettmann/Netflix
