Did The Black Mirror Episode 'Nosedive' Really Steal The Idea From Community?

"Black Mirror" earned a reputation for being one of the most inventive, dystopian TV series in the modern age. However, some viewers have noted how one episode seems to be ripped straight out of an American sitcom — "Community."

The episode in question is Season 3's "Nosedive," one of the most disturbing "Black Mirror" episodes. It takes place in a world where everyone uses an app to rate each other over every social interaction, basically like Yelp for people. When Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) gets invited to a wedding, her rating gradually decreases throughout her arduous journey to get there. It's not entirely dissimilar from the "Community" episode "App Development and Condiments," where a new app called MeowMeowBeenz comes to Greendale, where people can rate each other. It doesn't take long for factions to emerge based on people's scores on the app, with those earning the highest ratings becoming tyrannical rulers over those with fewer MeowMeowBeenz.

It's easy to see why this plot would come to light in the 2010s. Both episodes highlight people's obsession with how they're perceived through social media. And if people can rate businesses already, why shouldn't they rate each other? Decider asked "Black Mirror" creator Charlie Brooker about the similarities, to which he responded, "I didn't know about the episode, and subsequently people have said that to me." Brooker actually came up with a different plot for the idea initially before moving on with what would become "Nosedive."

Charlie Brooker explained how the idea of people gaining scores through an app initially manifested with a different idea that would've seen the main character take on more of a Charlie Sheen persona. He elaborated, "It was an overall ranking which I think I was seeing a numerical from 100 to 0 kind of thing, and the idea was that it was a very high status person being forced by a blackmailer to reduce their status to 0 against the clock. Then the idea was that they get into a Charlie Sheen situation where, as they did more and more outrageous things, they actually became more popular." 

For his part, Brooker doesn't seem to mind the "Community" comparisons. It's just one of those cases of parallel thinking, and it's easy to see where both show creators came from. And life actually imitated art for a while when a new app called Peeple came out in 2016 that allowed people to rate one another. It was naturally controversial, but Brooker actually started working on his "Black Mirror" idea before that app came out, and its emergence caused him trepidation. He went on to say, "I was quite worried about the Peeple app. At one point, I was thinking, 'Oh s***, does this mean we can or can't do that?' I tried to avoid thinking about other stories or things that might have used similar concepts or had similar sort of world views."

While both series have a similar premise, they utilize it in different ways. "Community" pokes fun at how people feel the need to judge one another, ultimately ending with Jeff (Joel McHale) and Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) becoming more connected by the end. In contrast, "Black Mirror" uses this plot to point out how inhuman forced kindness can become. They're both great shows, with these episodes being highlights of each.