You don’t need us to tell you that 2020 has been a weird one. Society has come as close to an actual dystopia than at any point since the 1970s, if not earlier than that, and we’re still far from out of the woodwork. It seems even Black Mirror — the nightmarish show that’s long argued that technology unlocks humanity’s basest instincts, when we now know all it takes is a demagogue preying upon racial and tribalist instincts — didn’t predict the cluster of clusterf*cks that descended upon the world in the last year. But the show’s creator, Charlie Brooker, may be making amends for that with a forthcoming Netflix mockumentary about our epically crap year.
This comes from a new interview with Hugh Grant, who was speaking to Vulture (in a bit sussed out by Deadline) about his just-wrapped HBO drama The Undoing. When asked about future projects, he blurted out that he was “doing a thing tomorrow, actually,” then mentioned that said thing was the aforementioned mockumentary. He offered few details, and in fact it doesn’t seem the project had been made public before Grant mentioned it. But at least we know who he’ll play. “I am a historian who’s being interviewed about the year,” he said. “I’m pretty repellent, actually! And you’ll like my wig.”
Mind you, we don’t know if Grant’s the star or one of many stars, or what approach it will take or, really, anything beyond the three or four details the beloved actor let loose upon the world. And since Grant is still doing some filming for the show, you may have to wait to learn more.
In the meantime, you can always look back at a rosier time by watching old episodes of Black Mirror, when our main worries were things like Twitter and Facebook-like social media apps and an optical device that allows you to literally block anyone you don’t like. Ah, life of, like, one year ago…