is to feel a horrible sense of dread. We've definitely delivered on that front.Humans are weak, because I love tech," he adds. That sentiment alone transcends the show's traditional near-future milieu. The second episode, "Loch Henry," is set in the present day, following a pair of documentary filmmakers who plan to give a shocking hometown murder the lurid true crime treatment.
"We wrapped shooting just before ChatGPT was launched," Brooker says, acknowledging that "Joan Is Awful" is eerily timely—even bystandards. He originally wanted to write a story about a news network using deepfake footage of politicians doing terrible things to get views, and another about some Average Joe discovering they've made national headlines for doing something totally innocuous: "No major transgression.
"I'm probably confounding all sorts of fan expectations," he says. "And I'm talking about the hardcore fans. You want to confound expectations, but also you want to give people what they want. And one thing that people do want fromRest assured,still courts all the die-hards—the ones who chart each Easter egg that pops up in every episode.