Immediate full disclosure: Black Mirror is one of my favorite shows of all time. I said it in our season 3 trailer article, and I mean it. When attempting to invent a way to prepare for the hotly-anticipated third season, I determined the show is far too ambitious to simply do one article for the entire series or even for one season. There are so many themes, morals, characters, and even worlds to explore for just one series/season overview. When recently re-watching the show, the amount of notes I took during Black Mirror episode 1 alone could be novelized.
Creator Charlie Brooker knows exactly what he’s doing to audiences. You’re forced to pay attention and think about every minutiae in the show. In the first episode, titled ‘The National Anthem,’ Brooker gives his weirdest outing first, as if to challenge viewers to continue watching. However, in an effort not to alienate everyone watching completely, the setting is a world very similar to our own in the episode. There is no high-concept environment or foreign reality in the pilot. In fact, the stakes are relatively low compared to other episodes of the series, but that’s to make the scenario plausible and thereby relatable. It also forces you to analyze the tiniest of details, which I’m definitely going to do here, including SPOILERS along the way.
Black Mirror episode 1 takes us across the pond to present day U.K., starting us in Prime Minister Michael Callow’s bedroom late at night as he’s awoken by a phone call from a staff member. He’s shown a video that has since gone viral of a ransom video: much-loved Princess Susannah (played by Lydia Wilson) has been kidnapped. The demand of the kidnapper is for the Prime Minister (played by Rory Kinnear) to have sexual intercourse with a pig on live television for all the world to bear witness. Yes, seriously. Naturally, Callow is opposed to it, stressing the urgency to locate the kidnapped Princess. However, the kidnapper has covered his tracks significantly well.
A potential rescue operation occurs at the Minister’s order, but they discover the warehouse they raided is empty. Authorities are also unable to trace the origins of the ransom video when it was posted on YouTube. Callow comes to grips with the reality of the situation in a very real, occasionally-threatening way. Imagining how a sex act on a pig would damage not just one’s perception among the public, but one’s marriage will turn anyone desperate and frustrated. How the P.M. deals with it is by lashing out at his staff and briefly choking his Home Secretary Alex Cairns (played by Lindsay Duncan) for not locating the Princess, thus reserving him to his fate.
Attempts are made to use green screen to simulate the Minister committing the act in question, but the kidnapper discovers the ruse and sends what’s assumed to be a severed finger belonging to the Princess to a news station. As Callow puts off paying this inhumane ransom, he begins falling out of favor with the public. Eventually, the royal family demands Callow to pay up or he loses guarantees of his and his family’s protection in the aftermath. With all that said, Callow finally steps up to the plate to fornicate with a pig as the world watches.
The last 10 minutes or so are utterly captivating yet unsettling. We see employees of a hospital, an otherwise noble group of individuals, as eager to watch the P.M. defile a pig as a bar full of drunk people. At first, the bar patrons and the nurses/doctors are cracking jokes and making a joyous ruckus about what’s to come. In a smart move from the British media, they play a very high-pitched noise before broadcasting the gratuitous human-on-pig sex, but the viewers are undeterred. Callow speaks directly to the camera, apologizing to his wife and dedicating this to the Princess’s safe return, prior to proceeding with a disgusting, awkward sexual encounter with a pig. Like I said, even though Black Mirror episode 1 is grounded in our reality, the situation is outlandish and weird to say the least.
As the audience continues watching, they begin feeling sorry for their Prime Minister and cease laughing, even respecting Callow for what he’s done for his country and the royal family. As the act continues, we find out the Princess was released an hour before the pig sex even started, which high-ranking government officials decided to keep secret from everyone, even Callow. The perpetrator was a Turner Prize winner, who hung himself before he could be found and prosecuted. This is where we discover the severed finger belonged to him as well.
Despite how bizarre and repulsive his demands were, the kidnapper had a point: he wanted the country to see how blind they are to other real world activities around them when they’re glued to a screen (even if they’re watching a man screw a pig). Really, this is the nature of the entire series, and not just Black Mirror episode 1. Brooker sufficiently explains through storytelling in every episode the potential consequence to a society’s reliance on technology for escape, interacting, love, and even justice.
After the nasty sexual exhibition, Callow falls into the public’s good graces, but his wife (played by Anna Wilson-Jones) is extremely distant with him, having cautioned him not to proceed with paying the ransom that way. Another immensely interesting aspect of this episode is the side-focus on the press and their cooperation with the government. Despite a notion that press is intended to be a separate entity, they agree to many of the Prime Minister’s terms in regards to hiding the video (until it organically goes viral) and how the sex act would be broadcast. We also see a rogue member of the press (played by Chetna Pandya) who arrives at the decoy warehouse just as the rescue operation occurs, and the rescue team, thinking her to be one of the kidnappers, shoot her in the leg as she flees. She recovers, but ultimately this impacts the story’s outcome very little.
The lesson in Black Mirror episode 1 is a little more clear cut since it motivates the kidnapper, but there’s still an entire wave of commentary Brooker includes about media coverage, public consumption of said media, and sacrificing one’s dignity for a greater cause. Despite this being the strangest Black Mirror episode on the showrunner’s first try, it was definitely efficient in reeling the viewer in for the long haul. Coming up next, we recap my 2nd favorite episode of the series; a visual, high-concept gem titled ‘Fifteen Million Merits.’