Black Mirror Season 6: Charlie Brooker's Hilarious Reason For Upping The Horror

"Black Mirror" is well-known for combining multiple genres to tell its sometimes horrific, sometimes touching, always compelling stories. Its collection of vignettes all take a look at the sprawling horror of life in the information age, even if it's trying to make you laugh or cry.

Charlie Brooker, the program's creator, has admitted that the upcoming sixth season of "Black Mirror" is going to be a bit heavier on its horror elements than previous seasons. Why go all in with the blood and doom? It seems Brooker has something to prove to his audience. "I was aware at the back of my head, some people had said, 'The last season was a bit frothy, wasn't it?' or 'A bit too cheerful,'" he said, at an appearance and QA session held in conjunction with a preview screening of the Season 6 premiere of "Black Mirror" at BFI Southbank, as reported by Radio Times. His witty retort to those critical types? "Well, f*** you."

Apparently, this wry sense of spite is what led Brooker in a fresh narrative direction for the season, causing him to pick up a crime heavy thought line for its episodes,  and ultimately causing him to completely reconsider what sort of storytelling really makes up a "Black Mirror" season.

Charlie Brooker admits that he found himself surprised by the dark turn his own writing took as he constructed the sixth season of "Black Mirror." As he told his audience at BFI Southbank, "this season I started out doing some with a very different take – a Red Mirror film, and almost like a crime and horror-led sister label, so to speak. [...] I started out and thought, 'I'm going to write some under the label Red Mirror for a while', that was where my mind was going. It's just the way they fell, it's just the way they came out was really unpleasant."

The episode summaries for Season 6 hint at Brooker's changing point of view. Among other notions, it will focus on a couple trying to dig up the truth about a shocking rumor in a small Scottish town, take a peek into life in an alternate version of NASA during the space race, follow a sales associate who is forced to commit horrifying acts to maintain worldwide harmony, and a pop starlet whose violent crime and constant pursuit by the paparazzi take their toll. 

As you can see, unpleasantness remains in the eye of the beholder, and Season 6 of "Black Mirror" will be in viewer's eyes on June 15.