As the creator and principal writer, Charlie Brooker is the driving force behind Black Mirror, influencing the show’s overall concept, themes, and storytelling style. In “The National Anthem,” which serves as the inaugural episode of Black Mirror, Brooker sets the tone for the series as a whole, crafting a narrative that explores the dark side of technology and its impact on society and human behavior.
The concept for the episode can be traced back to 2002, when Brooker wrote a Guardian column in which he referenced a short story idea that involved celebrity broadcaster Terry Wogan being forced to have sex with a sow in exchange for the release of a kidnapped princess. Brooker initially believed the episode would be humorous, and he wanted to marry the concept to a parody of 24, an American television series where each season takes place over the course of a single day, leading to a tense, serious tone. While remnants of comedy remain in “The National Anthem,” Brooker realized it would be more effective to pair the absurd premise with a dramatic tone, giving rise to Black Mirror’s distinct surreal style.
Many people associate “The National Anthem” with #piggate, a political scandal in which a biographer of Prime Minister David Cameron alleged that Cameron “inserted a private part of his anatomy” into a dead pig’s head during an Oxford University initiation ritual. However, in a 2015 Guardian interview, Brooker said the parallel was entirely coincidental, and he “probably wouldn’t have bothered writing an episode of a fictional comedy-drama if [he’d] known.” Brooker said the choice of a pig came after exploring other options: “We thought all through the farmyard. At one point we were thinking of a giant wheel of cheese. Then we came back to the pig … You needed something that straddles the line between comic and horrifying.”
With this strangely prescient premise, Brooker established himself as something of a clairvoyant. When news of #piggate broke, Brooker says he “did genuinely for a moment wonder if reality was a simulation, whether it exists only to trick me.”
