Each of the six episodes that make up season four will exclusively feature a female lead but executive producer Annabel Jones has revealed she and creator Charlie Brooker never planned it that way.
“Charlie and I don’t tend to think about the stories in that way. Sometimes, it just comes out,” she explained.
“But it’s great – great! – that they’re all strong female protagonists. I think what’s lovely about the show is that it’s not a strident statement.
“It’s more: Why not? We don’t even think about it from a gender perspective and I hope that’s progress. It’s more that we explore the best story and the best way to tell it.”
However, Annabel admitted that there was originally an episode which had a male protagonist but one member of the cast challenged it.
Andrea Riseborough expressed an interest in the instalment entitled Crocodile and asked Annabel and Charlie to change the lead character for her.
“Andrea read for one of the other parts and really like the journey of the protagonist and she challenged us and said, ‘Do you think it could be a woman?’” the executive producer told The Hollywood Reporter.
“Then we sort of said, ‘Oh, hold on.’ We hadn’t quite thought of that. We questioned it and worked it.
“Apart from the physicality element of it – a requirement that plays out in the episode’s first few minutes – we thought, ‘How often do you see a mother reduced to this level of desperations?’
“Then we thought that was actually quite interesting, and that’s the result of Andrea’s role.”
Black Mirror season 4 debuts on Netflix on December 29.
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