Hayley Atwell to star in second series of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror

Details of the three very different new episodes have been released

Hayley Atwell in BBC drama Restless (BBC)

Black Mirror the unusual satirical drama written by journalist-come-television writer Charlie Brooker will return to Channel 4 this year for a second series consisting of three dark episodes.

Restless actress Hayley Atwell will star in the first of the trio, each of which will once again have “a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality”, according to Brooker. In an interview in December he said: "Like the last series we've done three stories that are three different genres. We've also got all sorts of unpleasant things and also one of them is very sad.”

In Be Right Back Atwell appears as Martha alongside Domhnall Gleeson, her social media junkie boyfriend Ash. He is tragically killed just after the couple move to a remote cottage and Martha soon becomes aware of a creepy new social network that allows grieving relatives to communicate with the digital semblance of the deceased. Disgusted, but compelled by it, Martha, who discovers she is pregnant with Ash’s child, becomes embroiled in a murky world of online ‘ghosts’.

The following film, The Waldo Moment, stars Daniel Rigby as a failed comedian Jamie Salter who unexpectedly hits the big time when he is reduced to voicing teddy bear on an educational kids’ TV show. The cute but irreverent blue bear’s popularity grows beyond all proportion as he ridicules unsuspecting politicians and pillars of the community. He gets his own show and is persuaded to stand in a By-Election against Conservative politician Liam Monroe (Tobias Menzies). Just as H’Angus the Monkey mascot was elected Mayor of Hartlepool in 2002, might Waldo actually win?

The season finale, White Bear, stars Being Human’s Lenora Crichlow as amnesia sufferer Toni. She is on the run from “Hunter” Michael Smiley in a world where the transmittance of a mysterious signal has resulted in mass apathy among the population. Those able to resist its mind-melting effects are rampaging around doing whatever they want.

The first series of Black Mirror was broadcast in 2011 winning a Golden Rose at the Rose d’Or Television Festival last year and winning a gong at the International Emmys.