Charlie Brooker

The creator of dystopian anthology series Black Mirror on BANDERSNATCH, an interactive episode inspired by games and gaming culture.

- Andy Kelly

Interactive storytelling is nothing new, but something as mainstream as Netflix embracing the concept is a big deal. Bandersnatch, the newest episode of Black Mirror, lets you make choices that determine the path the story takes. And you can access it using just Netflix and a TV remote. I talked with writer Charlie Brooker about the episode, how it was made, and what inspired it.

How did you pitch the idea of an interactive Black Mirror story to Netflix?

They actually asked us. We had a meeting at their headquarters in Los Angeles—which, by the way, has M&M dispensers on every floor. That’s my overriding memory. Todd Yellin and Carla Engelbrecht from the tech division showed us some of their interactive capabilities, which were quite rudimentary at the time. Then they asked us if we’d be interested in coming up with a Black Mirror story using this technology.

And we said no! Well, we said yes, that’s interesting, we’ll go and think about it. Then, later, we came up with a story outline that could work. I wanted to do a retro episode that was actually set in the past. We’d done San Junipero before, which was set in 1987, but it was really the future. I also knew that I wanted to do a story about old, old computer games.

And from there we had the idea about a character in the past and someone in the future controlling him, trying to make sure he writes this particular computer game because it’s important in the future. A bit like the plot of The Terminator, basically. And then I thought, ‘What if the person giving this character instructions is you, the viewer? Hang on a minute, that sounds like it could be an interactive thing. Oh shit, that’s a good idea!’ And so we went back to Netflix and said, ‘Okay, we can do one now.’

Why were you initially reluctant to make an interactive episode of television?