Netflix has created a whole new streaming service based on the fake platform from Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series.
The dystopian anthology show returned to Netflix on Thursday (15 June), marking the first set of new episodes in four years and starring an ensemble cast including Aaron Paul, Josh Hartnett, Zazie Beetz and Paapa Essiedu.
Season six opens with “Joan Is Awful”, and follows a normal woman called Joan (Schitt’s Creek’s Annie Murphy), who learns that her life is being turned into a TV show starring Salma Hayek as her.
Joan Is Awful, the show within a show, airs in Black Mirror on a streaming service called Streamberry. It is incredibly similar to Netflix, with the shows featuring the same user interface as Netflix and episodes opening with the platform’s signature “tudum” sound.
On Tuesday (20 June) morning, the official Netflix UK and Ireland Twitter account changed its name to “Streamberry UK and Ireland”, with the usual “N” of the Netflix logo changed to an “S”.
“Welcome to Streamberry. #NewProfilePic,” the account tweeted, with its bio now reading: “Sweet streams.”
They also launched streamberry.tv, the fake Netflix-esque streaming service from the show.
Shows on the Streamberry homepage include nods to previous Black Mirror episodes and other Brooker projects, such as Selling San Junipero (“San Junipero”), Five Stars at a Wedding (“Nosedive”), Ashley On A Roll Tour Live! (“Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too”), and Rowdy and Peanut (Cat Burglar).
In addition, Netflix has made youareawful.com, where users can add their own names and photos to become the star of their own “Is Awful” show.
Appearing on the Pilot TV Podcast, Murphy admitted that she had been “so genuinely, happily surprised” by Netflix’s willingness to allow Brooker to parody the company in “Joan Is Awful”.
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“Giving them the logo and the sound effect and everything – it’s very obvious who we’re talking about,” she said. “I was very impressed that they gave the green light for that.”
Giving Black Mirror season six a three-star review, The Independent’s Nick Hilton suggested that Brooker needed to stick with the show’s “winning formula” in focusing on society as well as technology.
However, “Joan Is Awful” individually received a four-star rating, with Hilton writing: “Irreverent, scatological, and nightmarishly claustrophobic, ‘Joan is Awful’ is an excellent instalment in Black Mirror’s catalogue of Orwellian farces.”
Black Mirror season six is on Netflix now.
