‘Black Mirror’ Season 4 Shifts to Less Depressing Tone as Revealed by Creator Charlie Brooker; Filming to Move to Iceland for Episode 3

‘Black Mirror’ season 4 was recently confirmed for released on Netflix but is yet to receive an official released date. Creator Charlie Brooker, an English satirist and broadcaster known for injecting dark humor and controversial elements in his work, revealed that the upcoming season will have different tones and looks compared to past seasons.

According to The Independent, seasons 1 through 3 went through a range of genres including romance, mystery, and thriller. These mostly culminated in bad endings for the episode’s protagonist. However, Brooker expressed his intent on shifting to a tone that was less bleak in the new season.

During an interview with The Telegraph, Brooker revealed, "When we did previous seasons, we realised after we'd done the first two that basically each one was a slightly different genre, and we actively approached the first Netflix season like that. And we're carrying that forward [into season four], so we've got some strikingly different tones and looks.”

He continued, "We've got one that's overtly comic, much more overtly comic than anything we've done. It's got fairly mainstream comic elements, but also some really unpleasant stuff that happens. I haven't even seen the rough cut of it yet.”

Brooker added that the Jodie Foster-directed episode will have the tone of an indie drama film and that it will feature a mother-daughter relationship. He revealed that another episode will also focus on relationships but didn’t elaborate further.

It was also reported that Brooker and his team are preparing to shoot the third episode in Iceland. He also admitted, "I do think that at the moment, as we're doing new episodes, there's a limit to how much constant nihilistic bleakness I can take… And the world is in a place at the moment where I think maybe people appreciate things that aren't so unremittingly horrible.”

‘Black Mirror’ season 4 is currently in production. Its official Netflix release is yet to be announced. The science-fiction and psychological drama anthology series is known for its particularly dark and satirical take on the consequences of technology in modern society. The series was first broadcasted in Channel 4 but season 3 was commissioned on Netflix on September 2015.