Summary
The camera follows Callow as he walks inside the room and hears the sound of eating. He walks through curtains to find a pig with its snout in a dish of food. There are two screens with pornographic images on them. A cameraman and boom operator record him addressing the camera, saying he trusts this will bring about the safe return of the princess. Tearing up, he adds, “I love my wife. May God forgive me.” He removes his jacket and steps up to the backside of the pig, pulling down his trousers.
People in the pub groan as they watch. The film speed slows down as it focuses on the looks of disgust, horror, and sadness on the faces of the viewers. Jane watches from her bed with crossed arms. Blurry footage shows the princess walking out to the middle of the pedestrian-only Millennium Bridge over the Thames. Wearing her green dress, the princess passes out in the center of the bridge. Meanwhile, the man in white overalls glances at the TV in his studio while positioning a stool.
A hospital worker raises the remote to turn off the TV. A male nurse stops her. She says it’s been on for an hour though. He says it’s history. The TV shows the prime minister’s face sobbing as he struggles through the sex act. Inside the studio of the man with white overalls, the man hangs dead, facing away from the TV, his stool kicked away. His right hand is bandaged and bloody. He is missing a finger.
The shot cuts to two people and a cop running out to pick up the princess. She walks with the help of the officer. Meanwhile, the prime minister is vomiting into a toilet at the TV studio. An aide phones the home secretary to say they’ve found Susannah “stumbling about in the middle of the city,” sedated but unharmed. He also confirms the DNA has shown the finger was male. He then says a CCTV image shows the princess being released thirty minutes before the broadcast began.
Cairns asks why the kidnapper would do that. The aide says he guesses the man knew everyone would be elsewhere, watching screens. The home secretary says, “So it’s a statement. That’s what this is all about. About making a point.” She advises the aide to destroy that page of the report, and make sure no one, especially the prime minister, sees it.
She knocks on the door of the toilet stall to tell Callow he saved her, and Susannah is alive and well. His phone rings. It is Jane calling, but he can’t answer. Covered in sweat and sobbing on the floor of the toilet, he lets the phone ring.
The story jumps to a UKN report set one year after the ordeal. Callow and his wife make a public appearance at a school gymnasium, smiling for the children and cameras. Princess Susannah and her husband make a public appearance on a red carpet, their first public appearance since announcing their pregnancy.
The news reporter explains it was one year ago today that the former Turner Prize-winning artist Carlton Bloom coerced the prime minister to commit an indecent act. The reporter says that an art critic has caused controversy by describing it as “the first great artwork of the 21st century.” He goes on to say that the 1.3 billion viewers “all participated” in the event, but it failed to destroy a prime minister.
There are images of Callow and his wife smiling together outside No. 10 Downing Street. The reporter says that Callow’s approval rating is three times higher than it was last year at that time. Inside the residence, Jane runs ahead of her husband up the stairs. Callow says, “Jane. Jane, please.” She glances at him angrily and keeps going up the stairs while he stands at the bottom, hanging his head.
Analysis
In one of the episode’s most haunting scenes, Brooker immerses the viewer in Callow’s point of view as he enters the studio. Before seeing the animal, we hear the auditory imagery of the pig happily eating from a dish of food, oblivious to why it is there. In a poignant moment, Callow addresses the camera, tearing up as he says he loves his wife. The statement is met with sympathetic expressions of “aww” from people who, hypocritically, have tuned in to see him be humiliated.
Brooker builds on the theme of voyeurism as millions of people simultaneously groan at the sight of Callow mounting the pig. Brooker slows the camera speed to focus on the different reactions people have, their voyeuristic impulses colliding with genuine disgust, sympathy, and shame. In an instance of situational irony, even Jane watches the broadcast, unable to avert her gaze from the horrifying spectacle.
In an instance of dramatic irony, Brooker shows images of Princess Susannah stumbling around central London while the broadcast goes on. The point of view stays with her briefly, showing blurry images that imply she has been drugged with something and doesn’t have her bearings. Ultimately, she collapses in the center of Millennium Bridge. Though it is normally a high-traffic pedestrian crossing over the Thames, the bridge is devoid of people because everyone is watching the broadcast.
To add to the horror of the prime minister’s humiliation, the kidnapper stipulates that his intercourse with the pig end in ejaculation. Having been advised by the home secretary to take as long as he needs so as to avoid appearing eager, Callow thrusts into the pig for over an hour. Unbeknownst to him, the princess has already been freed, unharmed, and the man who set up the ordeal has hanged himself in his art studio.
In an instance of dramatic irony, Callow vomits into a toilet while the home secretary learns of the princess’s early release. Cairns and her aide speculate that the kidnapper always intended to release her early, knowing no one would discover her because they would be distracted by TV coverage of the scandal. Cairns concludes that he was making a statement about the public’s twisted voyeuristic desire to see people being humiliated, and about the moral implications of an increasingly technology-dependent and media-saturated society.
As the credits play, Brooker ties up the loose ends of the episode, revealing through a UKN report set one year later that the kidnapper was in fact an award-winning artist, Carlton Bloom. Because of his artist credentials, people view the event differently, interpreting it as a final artwork before Bloom killed himself. The report also suggests that the 1.3 billion people who took part in Bloom’s twisted experiment have developed a sense of remorse over their complicity. As a result, Callow enjoys higher-than-ever approval ratings, his sacrifice rewarded with appreciation from voters.
In this instance of situational irony, what Jane had predicted would lead to his ruin had the opposite effect, boosting him to popularity. However, the final shots of the episode show Jane being cold to her husband in private. This implies that while Callow has gained the respect of the nation, he has lost all dignity in his wife’s eyes.
