Yahoo News Exclusive: Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker reveals why season 5 only has 3 episodes
Black Mirror will soon be launching three new episodes on Netflix: 'Striking Vipers' featuring Anthony Mackie, 'Smithereens' with Andrew Scott and 'Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too' starring Miley Cyrus.
This fifth season sees a return to an old format for the show, which originally launched with three-episode series on Channel 4 before putting out two series of six episodes each on Netflix.
Speaking to Digital Spy, series creator and writer Charlie Brooker explained that the additional time spent developing December's interactive episode 'Bandersnatch' is why the series has reverted to a shorter run.
"Originally, 'Bandersnatch' was part of season five," Brooker said. "So 'Striking Vipers', we actually shot before we started shooting 'Bandersnatch'. 'Smithereens', a little bit of that overlapped with 'Bandersnatch'.
"But then as we worked on it more, it became apparent that 'Bandersnatch' was the equivalent of doing a whole season in itself."
Concerns over whether 'Bandersnatch' would be accessible on all devices also convinced the Black Mirror team to put it out as a standalone film. "You don't want to launch a season and you can't watch all of it," Brooker said.
"It just made more sense to do it as a standalone thing, so we decided to complete 'Bandersnatch' and put that out first, then release the remaining three stories, because they're a good compliment to each other... and it's what we always used to do in ye olden days!"
Having spent longer than expected completing work on 'Bandersnatch', producing more than three episodes for season five would've meant pushing back the release date.
"It was that [putting out three episodes] or make people wait longer," said Brooker. "We could've just made everyone wait, but we thought 'No... let's disappoint them sooner!'"
The new season will also feature Topher Grace, Snowfall's Damson Idris and Guardians of the Galaxy star Pom Klementieff.
Black Mirror season 5 comes to Netflix on June 5.
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