Charlie Brooker reveals the inspiration behind the Black Mirror episode 'Loch Henry' | BAFTA On Set
it’s been interesting because of watching them film they’ve quite quickly formed a nice camaraderie the cast so that’s all I’m just enjoying watching them all interact at the moment I mean some terrible things are going to happen to them but um you know I’m not responsible and I am responsible for that I’m directly responsible for that oh well there we go we’re filming an episode of Black Mirror called lock Henry every so often we do a Black Mirror that’s sort of set very much in the real world in the present day kind of the first
question any platform Network whatever is going to ask is what’s the hook this takes place in a small what was a successful tourist attraction sort of village on the shores of a lock called lock Henry where a terrible a terrible crime happened many years ago and uh our lead characters are interested in probing into that as part of a true crime documentary anyway building up to that I haven’t got your storytelling instincts you tell I play Richard in this little rom-com uh who is the father of the friend of one of the protagonists but who
himself perhaps was more of a protagonist in the past than he may seem now through yourself oh show yourself oh there’s a
that are kind of deconstruction of that sort of narrative and it obviously being a child of Brook I’m sure it sort of twists on where it’s going where you expect it to go classic Charlie we should just say that shouldn’t we so I’ve never laughed out loud so much I script on first reading and it was just something that I was dying to be involved in incredibly inventive incredibly human is so full of heart and so full of humor and it’s scary as hell I think it comes to True Crime we have a fascination with
obviously we’ve always had a fascination with crime I mean crime stories have been um you know popular since the Year Dot the True Crime thing is is I think we’re all a bit fascinated by that at the moment yeah Charlie Charlie Pizza classic Charlie spin on it but your dad never had all this stuff he wasn’t filming for broadcast um can you imagine this is something we slightly go into in the episode there’s a bit of an artistic veneer there’s there’s a bigger artistic veneer that goes on now I think in True Crime documentary Making
where they look like Scandinavian Art House movies or something there’s like a lot of Moody sort of very portentous and somber and serious and it makes you feel like you’re really settling down to watch something very important and that helps take away from the slightly more gross rubbernecker sort of more pieces Fascination angle because it used to be that crime documentaries were very sort of tacky and we’re all sort of about like you know graphics with blood splashing about on the screen and world’s most horrifying serial murderers and now it’s there’s a sort of Art
House treatment to them that makes them feel more Prestige they are more Prestige um so I don’t know why I don’t know that there’s anything that’s changed in us as a people I think that the treatment the way these things amazed has has changed slightly in years since I was in front of any kind of camera at all last time would have been that old one-year dad had it was always Scotland it was always Scotland it’s partly um some one thing sometimes people say about Black Mirror sometimes people go oh it’s going to be American
Now isn’t it it’s got a bit American and I’m like well like Netflix have never said to me can you make it more American please like we’ve and we like to showcase bits of Britain bits of British culture now and then and I thought well Scotland’s such a you know we’re all I mean I’m sure Scotland is ashamed of this um so let’s rub their noses in it and put this front and center or rather in the background of every other shot it’s so I mean I don’t know what we’re going to do we’re gonna
have to try and fix this in post it’s a disaster look at it that was that was run one reason was it it’s obviously um it’s good looking isn’t it it’s good looking and that’s sort of partly part of what’s going on in the story and there’s a sort of and also there’s a sort of there’s a grit and a sense of view it’s quite it’s a Darkly comic episode this one not the end but with your dad what ended with your dad can I just start from the beginning just keep pretend you don’t know
about those stuff yet sure okay there’s an unsentimental strand of humor I think that that feels distinctly Scottish to me and hopefully we’re touching on that too it’s fun and it’s just it’s a great country and it’s great people great Crews it’s got a great spirit so um you know I’ve really enjoyed being up here I’m a fan of true crime documentaries I should probably say I mean a fan or a ghoul I don’t know I can’t work it out um I’m a ghoul um no I was watching several times I’ve been watching um true
crime documentaries and I’m struck by the beauty of the landscape because I think because often that you’re dealing with things where there’s often not actually that much footage of people murdering people strangely enough so documentary makers often kind of pad out their films with Moody shots of landscape details around the sort of Locale in which the these terrible things happened and quite often it has it’s quite a seductive effect and more than once I’ve been watching a documentary and found myself Googling where where it is and seeing if I can book a holiday there or
something like that and so it was sort of born of that experience that’s that sort of becomes part of what this story is in the story the the things that happened years ago tainted the place’s reputation and killed off the tourist trade and now there’s a sense that actually maybe enough time has passed and True Crime being The Sensation that it is and people having giant TVs on their walls that can you know that a great showcase for beautiful drone shots that actually maybe this is going to be pretty good for the tourist trade it’s
it’s quite a caustically friendly wink I guess at the genre in general another thing that’s going on in this is we’re sort of doing a little bit it’s a little bit about TV making and the sort of process of cutting trailers together and the sort of a bit of Razzmatazz and the pitching you have to do and things like that um yeah but no there’s a lot of there’s a sort of certain look isn’t there now there’s a lot of fetish fetish size fetish fetishization fetish fetish icing fetishy sizing I can’t say it you know
what I mean is this that is that there’s a fetish for the texture of old media in things like old video and film and stuff is sort of part of it as well all of that sort of texture yeah so we’re sort of there’s there’s you know a sumptuous reconstructions crashing up alongside like a bit of video from like 1993 of a reporter with big air sort of yapping on about a terrible skeleton that’s been found um so I don’t know I’ve wandered off topic there but it’s so it’s that you know there’s a they’re
kind of like a collage aren’t they these days it’s a very dark comedy you know there are moments of extreme uh extreme funniness but you know the under under current of the episode is is the story of you know a serial killer or people going missing and and the tool that’s taken on this small town and also the sort of General Public’s thirst for True Crime the whole experience has been lovely you know it’s quite a small cast none of us had worked together before but I haven’t worked with you know John Hannah now and
my Harla and Samuel it’s been incredibly relaxed we’ve got great chemistry we’re getting on really really well we’ve laughed so much and uh is you know he’s an actor’s director he he really lets you get on with these get great ideas and he’s very approachable so it’s kind of been a bit of a dream job so far so we’ve got five episodes in this season I’ve deliberately gone out of my way to do something a bit different as well with some of the stories because I was a bit I wanted to sort of change it
up a bit from not always being a show where someone’s frowning an iPhone it’s a red carpet for you is I think like what I think Black Mirror hopefully has always done is done something surprising when it’s at its best you don’t quite know what you’re going to get basically and so I wanted to change it up a bit so it’s maybe more different than it was in previous Seasons if that makes sense foreign police interviews diaries that kind of thing yeah we can look into those something unseen unheard unexplored I’ve got a loose idea
for a band of snatch follow-up actually but so there’s always a chance I think you’d need a really good reason to do it so with bandersnatch I felt like we had a good reason to do it partly the story was helping explain why we were doing it interactively you’d need a good you’d need a good excuse basically to be using something that isn’t just a linear a linear story in terms of other media I want to see a black mirror pinball table that’s what I want um I want and I want one when they make
them if they if they made them I want one yeah that’s my been my primary motivation for making this whole show and it still hasn’t happened yet um yeah no it could do I mean I’d like to see graphic novels you name it
