Season six of Black Mirror has finally arrived on our screens, following a four-year wait since the fifth installment.
Five episodes have been released on Netflix, starring Josh Hartnett and Aaron Paul: Joan Is Awful, Loch Henry, Beyond The Sea, Mazey Day, and Demon 79.
The season begins with Joan is Awful, which follows a ‘ordinary lady,’ played by Annie Murphy, who discovers her life has been surprisingly extended into a major adaption starring Salma Hayek.
As Joan attempts to recover control over her secrets being revealed on a massive streaming platform, mayhem follows, only for her to discover a startling twist that has her rethinking all of her decisions.
The episode also features Michael Cera and Himesh Patel, who portray characters on the Netflix comedy Streamberry.
Here’s all you need to know about Joan Is Awful’s cast…
Annie Murphy
Annie, from Schitt’s Creek, plays Joan, a “ordinary lady” who finds herself in a completely strange circumstance.
Joan’s life has been abruptly transformed into a massive TV adaptation, leaving her struggling to recover control over her secrets being revealed on streaming site Streamberry.
In addition to Schitt’s Creek, for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, Annie has appeared in the dark comedy series Kevin Can F**k Himself.
Salma Hayek
Magic Mike star Salma plays herself, acting as TV Joan.
Ahead of the episode dropping, she revealed one particularly grim scene left her fearing she’d be in trouble, telling Radio Times: ‘It’s as if I created an alter ego where I could do the most disgusting, grotesque things that you would never do in real life… and have permission to do that.
‘It’s been surreal, and I think only a mind like Charlie Brooker’s could have come up with such a concept.
‘There are so many moments that shocked me in the script. There is one huge one that I had to come to terms with, and made me ask myself, “Do I really want to do this? Am I going to get in trouble?”‘
Rob Delaney
Catastrophe and Deadpool 2 actor Rob Delaney plays Joan’s ex-boyfriend Mac, who tries to reignite their romance before worrying their romance will play out in front of the world.
Meanwhile, Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian) portrays his TV counterpart.
Michael Cera
The episode also stars Michael Cera as Beppe, who states in the teaser that the Streamberry programme Joan is Awful is a “adaptation of Joan’s life.”
Avi Nash, who portrays Joan’s fiancé Krish, and Himesh Patel, who plays Krish’s TV version, join the Superbad and Scott Pilgrim vs the World star.
Before the premiere of the episode, creator Charlie Brooker claimed that it was inspired by Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of startup Theranos.
He told us: ‘Joan is Awful this season, I had half an idea which was, is there a story about… the title for some reason stuck in my head.
‘And I was thinking, is there a story about an average woman who finds herself on the front page of the newspaper?
‘She’s the lead item on the news – not because she’s involved in a terrible scandal, or she’s done something heroic, but just she’s like, [the] main character of the day, her co-workers don’t like the way she chews her food or something minor like that. I was like, I don’t know what the story is, but it’s a funny situation.’
He continued: ‘There’s another idea… which was to do [with] like deep fake AI generated imagery being streamed by a news network. But I didn’t know what to do with either of these ideas. So you’ve got an idea, but you don’t have a story.
‘And then I was watching The Dropout, which is the dramatisation of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos story, and I was watching that with my wife and we were sort of commenting on like, god, this feels like it happened yesterday, and here it is already a drama on TV.’
Black Mirror is available to watch on Netflix.
