Black Mirror season seven to air next month with ‘mind-expanding’ tech story

By Casey Cooper-Fiske, PA Entertainment Reporter

Black Mirror season seven is to air next month with a story about “mind-expanding” technology and a follow-up to the show’s popular USS Callister episode.

The new series will launch on April 10, with Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Will Poulter, Hard Truths’ Michele Austin and People Just Do Nothing’s Asim Chaudhry among the latest cast members to be announced.

In a new trailer released on Thursday, characters can be seen putting on technology which alters their “neural structure”, playing violent video games and working with artificial intelligence (AI).

The clip also shows the USS Callister ship from the show’s fourth series, which will be part of a new story, having been at the centre of a tale about a sci-fi video game and misuse of power in its first appearance.

Further cast members announced on Thursday include Ben Bailey Smith (Andor), Josh Finan (Say Nothing), James Nelson-Joyce (A Thousand Blows), Jay Simpson (The Day Of The Jackal), and Michael Workeye (This Is Going to Hurt).

Speaking about the new series of the dystopian show at a Netflix event in September last year, creator Charlie Brooker said: “You can expect a mix of genres and styles.

“We’ve got six episodes this time, and two of them are basically feature-length. Some of them are deeply unpleasant, some are quite funny, and some are emotional.”

Season six of the Netflix show included episodes such as Joan Is Awful, which saw a woman discover that the events of her life were being retold in a TV show, and Beyond The Sea, about astronauts who are able to transfer their consciousness to replicas of their bodies on Earth when not needed in space.

Famous faces including Salma Hayek, Aaron Paul, Kate Mara, Rob Delaney, Michael Cera, John Hannah, Josh Hartnett and Zazie Beetz appeared in Black Mirror’s sixth series.