Black Mirror season 4 might not be so dark: ‘The world is in a place where it might appreciate things that aren't so unremittingly horrible’

'There's a limit to how much constant nihilistic bleakness I can take,' creator Charlie Brooker said

If season 3 of Black Mirror was the ‘finally gets big budget’ season, its fourth - on the way through Netflix - will be the one in which it experiments more with tone.

There were a whole range of genres in season 3 and even an episode with an optimistic ending (‘San Junipero’), but a bleakness ran through all of them (especially the infamous ‘Shut Up and Dance’).

Creator Charlie Brooker knows this is what people want from the show, but at the same time thinks that, given the wretched bleakness of the world right now, viewers might also enjoy something lighter.

"I do think that at the moment, as we're doing new episodes, there's a limit to how much constant nihilistic bleakness I can take,” he told The Telegraph.

“And the world is in a place at the moment where I think maybe people appreciate things that aren't so unremittingly horrible. But you also don't want to short-change people on the unremitting horribleness."

He added that they’ll be continuing with the theme of different genres each episode with the new season.

"We've got one that's overtly comic, much more overtly comic than anything we've don,” he explained. “It's got fairly mainstream comic elements, but also some really unpleasant stuff that happens. I haven't even seen the rough cut of it yet.

"Then, Jodie Foster's done one, that's more got the tone of an indie movie, an indie drama. There's a mother and daughter relationship in it.

"The one we're about to shoot is a crime thriller. And we're doing one that's got relationships at the heart of it.

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"And then five and six are slightly still up for grabs."

Black Mirror season 4 is in production right now, with an official Netflix release date yet to be announced.