Black Mirror creator Charlie Booker has put his own dystopian spin on 2020, by creating a mockumentary starring Hugh Grant. Photo / Getty Images
Black Mirror creator Charlie Booker has put his own dystopian spin on 2020, by creating a mockumentary starring Hugh Grant. Photo / Getty Images
It's no secret that 2020 has been everybody's year from hell.
Now, Black Mirror creator Charlie Booker is about to put his own dystopian spin on it, by creating a 2020 mockumentary starring Hugh Grant.
The details of the upcoming mockumentary are completely under wraps, but Hugh Grant did let slip earlier this year during an interview about The Undoing with New York Magazine that he'll be starring in the project.
"Charlie Brooker has written a mockumentary about 2020. It's for Netflix," Grant said, adding that he will be "an historian who's being interviewed about the year. I'm pretty repellent, actually! And you'll like my wig."
Booker has worked on the BBC show Charlie Booker's Weekly Wipe which ran from 2013 to 2016.
He has also been an outspoken columnist for The Guardian.
Booker has won himself five Emmy Awards for Black Mirror, which include Outstanding Television Movie in 2019 for the bleak Black Mirror interactive movie Bandersnatch.
Basically, he's an excellent commentator on the cultural world.
If you've binge-watched all of Black Mirror and don't want to wait for Booker's new mockumentary, another fantastically similar television show to binge is a six-part co-production between the BBC and HBO, Years and Years, which is on SBS and SBS On Demand.
Written by Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who, A Very English Scandal), the series tells the story of one ordinary British family, the Lyons, starting in 2019 and then hurtling forward each episode through the next 15 years of their lives.
It's a gripping — and frequently horrifying — imagined journey through society's near future, with issues like climate change, economic downturn, refugee crises and even nuclear war looming large over the Lyons family's everyday lives.
Episode one sets the tone, as the family gathers in grandmother Muriel (Anne Reid)'s Manchester garden to celebrate her 92nd birthday. The family's usual squabbles are suddenly interrupted by the sound of an air-raid siren — and an emergency TV broadcast announces that President Trump has fired a nuclear missile at China.
Is this the start of World War III?
The four Lyons siblings are the series' beating heart, each character's story demonstrating in a different way how the personal is political.
Stephen (Rory Kinnear) is a high-flying financial adviser forced to desperate measures to provide for his family when another GFC-esque banking collapse hits. Edith (the always brilliant Jessica Hynes) is an outspoken activist, home from China and battling the very real effects of her proximity to that Trump-ordered nuclear attack.
Rosie (Ruth Madeley) is a young mum and wheelchair user, suddenly contending with austerity measures brought in by the people she voted for.
Most affectingly, there's Daniel (Russell Tovey), a housing officer who falls in love with one of the refugees under his watch. As the government takes an increasingly hard line against the refugee influx, Daniel takes extreme measures to stay with the man he loves.
Looming large over them all is Vivienne Rooke, a populist politician equal parts Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Katie Hopkins, and brought to life in a chilling, assured performance from Emma Thompson.
