Charlie Brooker’s hit Black Mirror returns for another season — in the form of the single, film-length episode The Bandersnatch. With Bandersnatch, Brooker’s team has made an interactive version of the show, but never fear: it’s just as dark as ever!
Jump to : How to Stream Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
What is Black Mirror: The Bandersnatch about?
From the pen of TV Go Home and Brass Eye writer (and Screenwipe presenter) Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror offers a dark and disturbing reflection of our times. (The name doesn’t come from that: turn your phone off, look at the screen, and tell me what you see.)
Previous seasons have reimagined classic science fiction themes in a new light, presenting office work as a lifetime of static cycling and imaging a time when you have to pay not to be constantly bombarded with ads in your own home. I don’t know how he thinks of this stuff.
The latest season, The Bandersnatch, is different. It follows the fortunes of games programmer Stefan Butler, who is in the process of adapting an old-fashioned ‘choose your own adventure’ story into a computer game. The show’s audience were able to choose Stefan’s adventure, being offered ten-second intervals to make decisions before the default decision was made in a format much like the ‘choose your own…’ books. In a typically meta touch, some plots involve Stefan beginning to break down mentally under the belief than an unseen external force is controlling his actions.
The Bandersnatch comprises 150 minutes of unique footage, and viewers can restart the film, delete the records of their previous choices and navigate it anew whenever they like.
The Cast: Who stars in Black Mirror: The Bandersnatch?
2018’s interactive Black Mirror season starred Fionn Whitehead, Will Poulter and Asim Chaudhry. Whitehead, best known for his lead role in 2017’s Dunkirk movie, wasn’t told key details of Bandersnatch — including the fact that it would be interactive — until after he had accepted the part.
Comedian Asim Chaudhry plays Mohan Thakur, head of fictional software company Tuckersoft. Chaudhry is best known in his home country, the UK, for his lead role as failed entrepreneur and radio station Svengali Chabuddy G in People Just Do Nothing.
Will Poulter, whose high-profile acting career stretches back to 2007’s Son of Rambow and who appeared in The Revenant, might be most recognizable for his role as Gully in the Maze Runner, stars as game developer Colin Ritman. Negative feedback from the Bandersnatch audience caused Poulter to quit Twitter at the end of 2018.
How can you and Stream watch Black Mirror: The Bandersnatch?
Black Mirror is a Netflix original, available on the streaming site from December 28, 2018.
Because Netflix focuses on staggered or geoblocked releases only for content where there are rights issues with other copyright holders, Black Mirror should be available everywhere as soon as it comes out. It’s available only on Netflix, not on Google Chromecast or Apple TV, because the more complex episode structure hasn’t been optimized for those services. Otherwise, wherever you are, you should be fine watching The Bandersnatch!
How to stream Black Mirror: The Bandersnatch
You should be able to watch The Bandersnatch wherever you are in the world, thanks to Netflix’ liberal attitude to location when it comes to its own content.
If you do run into any problems, you can fix them with a VPN. You just need to make sure you get one that’s effective at content unblocking, and is fast enough to let you stream. While there are a lot of options, we’d recommend NordVPN.
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