Black Mirror is at it again. Several years ago, Bandersnatch, a special spin-off episode of the anthology series, which tells dark, cautionary tales about the use of technology, turned heads for putting interactivity directly in a TV show. You were able to, by using simple either-or choices, choose which path the story took, to a degree. What was clever about it was how the function mirrored form, as the episode itself followed the creation of a game offering a similar kind of choice – or an illusion of choice, as the case turned out to be. There were many meta layers to it. And now an episode in the brand new series of Black Mirror, released on Netflix this week, is trying to do a similar thing.
Sort of.
The episode in question is Plaything, which stars Peter Capaldi as a scraggly suspect in a murder case, one which has links to an unusual video game made during the 1990s. The episode revolves around Capaldi’s character’s statement and life story, as we flash back to the 1990s, when he was working as a video game journalist for magazine PC Zone, just as Black Mirror creator and episode writer Charlie Brooker once did. His life takes a dramatic turn when he’s asked to preview his idol Colin Ritman’s new game.
If the Ritman name sounds familiar that’s because it is. Ritman was in Bandersnatch, where he was also idolised by the main character, and he’s played by the same actor again, Will Poulter (who was excellent in the prescription drug-focused series Dopesick, in case you haven’t seen it). There’s so much about the set-up of Plaything that’s similar: Tuckersoft is once again the fictional game developer at the heart of the story, only this time it’s depicted in the early 90s rather than the 80s, and hallucinogenic drugs play a catalytic role in the plot again. The major difference is the game around which everything revolves.