BLACK MIRROR Writer's Room
Cast & Characters (4)
Bits & Timeline (17)
The Black Mirror Writer's Room Introduction
The hosts introduce the writers of the hit sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror, setting the stage for a discussion about the evil potential of technology and screens.
"What if that screen was evil?"
The Sinister Language of the Writer's Room
The writers establish their paranoid relationship with technology, demanding airplane mode and pitching 'fit' ideas like voice memos from deceased fathers.
"We have our own language in the writer room. Good luck keeping up."
"I don't really trust pitching anything in front of a machine."
Cherub Wiley's Butt-Camera Pitch
Cherub Wiley explains how Charlie Brooker hired him for his weird texting style and pitches a new episode involving backup cameras surgically implanted in human buttocks.
"You put the backup camera in your butt and so everyone's looking at the cameras instead of looking where they're going."
"Nicole Scherzinger plays the camera in his ass."
Dicky Beef: The Royal Writer
Richard Goffernim, a royal socialite 423rd in line for the throne, discusses his transition into writing and his morbid advent calendar for dying relatives.
"I am about 400th 23rd in line for the throne."
"I love your little advent calendar you get to eat when one of them dies."
Baby Angel's Nanny Cam Origin Story
Baby Angel recounts a concussive hallucination involving a nanny cam that led her to believe phones are actually inside our eyeballs and minds.
"Your phone is a microwave. Your phone is your head."
"Charlie goes straight to the ER to donate blood."
The Black Mirror Pitch: Clicks as Currency
The writers discuss the difficulty of American actors wanting to guest star and pitch a dystopian scenario where rent is paid in TikTok clicks and views, which the Rizzler ultimately deemed derivative.
"I would argue that typewriters were the phones of 1898."
"What's the phone of the medieval times? Is it the sword?"
"Sir Patrick Stewart came in and he's like, 'Listen, I think my phone is a quill and a madman.'"
"Remember the cash register made of clicks?"
Hacking the Prime Minister's Smart Oven
The writers escalate a pitch about Meta's food-sensing glasses into a plot where hackers assassinate the Prime Minister by undercooking his chicken via cloud technology.
"What if you can hack the Prime Minister's oven and undercook his chicken and kill him?"
"You're not holding his daughter captive anymore. You're holding his fridge."
The Graveyard Cloud and AI Corpses
A pitch involving high-tech tombstones that display viral videos and full-body scanners that turn corpses into AI actors so the living can talk to them or lay on warm processors.
"They're stealing their entire identity and putting it on the cloud."
"A little girl wakes up and it was a dream."
Pitch or Bitch: The Diderot Effect
Dicky Beef attempts to pitch a story about a man who buys a coat and goes bankrupt upgrading his life, which the group immediately dismisses as a 'bitch' because it lacks technology.
"Are you pitching an episode or are you complaining about your life?"
"It's a bitch because there's no phone."
The Prime Minister's Smart Dildo Trade War
The writers reach a fever pitch with a scenario where the President of Japan hacks the UK Prime Minister's WiFi-enabled sex toy to force a trade agreement during a moment of vulnerability.
"So it's a dildo with a screen."
"I'm gonna hack into the dildo and I'm gonna talk directly to him when he's the most vulnerable."
"I'm gonna hack into the dildo."
"The come is the agreement."
Waymo Prom: A Coming of Age Car Story
The writers reminisce about a 'beautiful' episode involving self-driving cars attending prom, which ends with a dark twist where the human passengers are slowly dying inside while the robots live their best lives.
"It was really like a beautiful coming of age story with automatic cars."
"They've been locked in the car of a robot. And that robot is living life."
"We wanted to write a Lightning McQueen companion story with a little bit of Transformers."
The Brain-Chip Acting Exercise
Cherub Wiley demonstrates the show's signature move: putting a chip in his brain to enter 'the cloud,' resulting in a vision of a dinosaur eating his butt. Baby Angel and Mummy follow with their own abstract 'hacks.'
"I imagined I went back in time and a dinosaur was trying to eat my butt."
"If I went back to the present, I wouldn't have a butt."
"What if someone's hacking into the clothes and turning all the whites to pinks?"
Marrying the Microwave Prime Minister
Baby Angel pitches a tragic romance where a lonely woman falls in love with her microwave after the Prime Minister calls her through it, only for the appliance to 'unboot' after their wedding.
"I start going on dates with this phone microwave."
"He unboots. He doesn't reboot."
"You're sitting in there with your phone microwave in your marriage bed."
Black Mirror Logline Rapid Fire
The writers cycle through dozens of high-concept loglines including selfies as currency, teeth made of tiny phones, and a NICU where babies are used as iPad light sources.
"In a world where selfies are money, you have to pay the train with how hot you are."
"Your fingers are phones."
"Hinge, except when you swipe, you kill them."
One Word Story: The Broken Phone
The writers attempt a 'one word story' improv exercise to close the show, resulting in a bizarre logline about two women upgrading to a new friend via a broken phone.
"Two women find a broken phone and upgrade to another friend."
The Fourth Wall Shatters: The Nanny Cam Revelation
The group notices flashing lights and descends into a paranoid meta-narrative, claiming they are chips in a brain and projections from years ago.
"We are the chips in someone else's brain and they're writing a TV show and successing off our profits."
"You are merely seeing a projection of us filmed years ago."
Showbiz Phone Finale
The panelists deliver their signature sign-off, blending the show's title with the episode's tech theme before collapsing in unison.
"Now that's why they call it show business phone."
"Good night internet."