Black Mirror is back on Netflix for its seventh season, delivering another run of tech-inspired tales of horror and darkness. However, some of us are old enough to remember the December of 2011, when Black Mirror first debuted as a gritty and not especially star-studded Channel 4 series. It’s fair to say that its first episode – The National Anthem – pushed a lot of buttons and got tongues wagging all over the UK. The new season’s arrival felt like a great opportunity to head back in time and revisit that remarkable episode of television.
The original Black Mirror premiere featured a simple, but audacious narrative concept. This is your content warning before we start to discuss it in detail. It’s not for the faint of heart.
The National Anthem focuses on British prime minister Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear). After a beloved member of the royal family is kidnapped by terrorists, he’s faced with a grotesque dilemma. The kidnappers have only one ransom demand: that afternoon, Callow must have sexual intercourse with a pig on live TV.
Now that the concept of Black Mirror is so firmly entrenched and the episode is mostly remembered for its similarity to a salacious allegation that later emerged about a real UK prime minister, it’s easy to forget how remarkable that original idea was at the time. It walks the boundary between absurd comedy and chilling plausibility absolutely perfectly.
This episode is arguably the peak of Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker’s writing. It’s a completely off-the-wall idea, executed with a completely straight face and while wearing the clothes of a political thriller. The claustrophobic filming style and chilly cinematography recalls the then-popular political sitcom The Thick of It, but the comedy is so dark here as to be almost non-existent.
Much of this comes from the performances, with Kinnear completely plausible as a desperate politician fighting the tide of public opinion. Lindsay Duncan is tremendous as s ruthless home secretary – definitely eyeing up 10 Downing Street for herself throughout – with ice running through her veins, while Anna Wilson-Jones does surprisingly effective work with a small role as Callow's wife Jane.
The National Anthem was a shocking introduction to the bleak world of Black Mirror
(Credit: Channel 4)
But what’s truly remarkable is the way The National Anthem still feels like a truthful, plausible account of the way news and public opinion operates in the age of social media. In the episode’s early scenes, we see news organisations grappling with whether to break cover and tell a potentially controversial story – even though it’s already all anybody can talk about on social platforms.
It’s then a case of ebb and flow, with both the news organisations and the politicians obsessed by the temperature of the discourse. Initially, public sympathy lies with Callow and there’s no expectation he should go through with the horrible demand. However, as the day wears on and attempts by Downing Street to wriggle out of the situation via deceit come to light, the tenor changes. Gradually, but undeniably, it becomes clear that Callow is going to have to do it. His political career would certainly be over if he said no, and he’d have the death of a young woman on his conscience.
The genius of the writing here is in how steadily and plausibly it builds the situation around Callow. When the ransom demand first comes to light, the characters and the audience are equally certain that this won’t have to happen. But by adding building block after building block, Brooker sketches the chain of events that not only make it likely – but actually make it completely inevitable. When Callow walks into that room at the end of the episode, it’s not a twist. It’s just what needs to happen.
While The National Anthem is very much a topical thriller, existing squarely in that apex of social media’s popularity in the late-2000s and early-2010s. These platforms were enormous, but still had something of the no-holds-barred Wild West environment that pushed them to the top. That’s not really the same in 2025, of course, but the mechanisms of public opinion still operate in this way through a more complex ecosystem of short-form platforms, group chats, and memes.
If anything, the dark humour and schadenfreude of the masses is even more prominent today. It’s difficult to imagine the irony-pilled Gen Z audience who are today’s dominant internet demographic having any sympathy for Callow when faced with an opportunity to generate memes, jokes, and other forms of content around something so newsworthy and so scandalous. Politicians weren’t particularly sympathetic figures in 2011, but it’s a whole different ball game in that respect today.
The National Anthem might not boast the A-list casts of today’s Netflix era of Black Mirror – the new season alone features the likes of Paul Giamatti and Awkwafina – but it was a stark mission statement for the show’s tone and ethos. It’s not a sci-fi story of doom, but a terrifying tale of how technology is warping and twisting our current world until something that once seemed ridiculous and impossible ends up feeling inevitable. In the era of Donald Trump, I think we all feel that more acutely than ever.
All episodes of Black Mirror are streaming in the UK via Netflix.
0 Comments