poliphilo

I thought I knew what to expect from Charlie Brooker- and this wasn't it. Usually he scarfs up his moral seriousness in comedy but here it went naked. A people's princess is kidnapped. The kidnapper will kill her unless the prime minister of the day has sex with a pig on live TV. In pre-publicity Brooker talked about being inspired by The Twilight Zone- which had us expecting a twist in the tail, but the only twisted tail was the piggie's. The P.M went to his preposterous doom like a tragic hero. He was a shit, but even shits have their human dignity- and a premise which had seemed comic at first became something else in its playing out. I went to bed chastened. Like the fictional population of Brooker's fictional Britain I'd wanted to see the politician fuck the pig and that wasn't very nice of me, was it? Most TV satire is about her awful they are. This was about how awful we all are. I looked into the Black Mirror and what I saw was ugly.