While ‘Black Mirror’ fans eagerly await the show’s much-anticipated fifth series, Netflix has thrown us all a bone to keep us entertained.
Years before ‘Black Mirror’ became a global sensation, producers Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones worked on ‘Dead Set’, a five-part series which is now streaming on Netflix in the UK.
Written by Charlie, the show aired on E4 in 2008, at a time when ‘Big Brother’ still shaped a huge part of the conversation around popular culture.
‘Dead Set’ takes place in a fictionalised version of the ‘Big Brother’ house, at a time when a zombie outbreak is taking place in the outside world, and slowly spreads to the set of the reality show.
Jaime Winstone, Riz Ahmed and Adam Deacon all feature in the cast, which also includes a number of real-life former housemates, including Brian Belo, Makosi Musambasi and Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace.
The show’s then-presenter Davina McCall also stars as a fictionalised version of herself, who falls victim to the zombie outbreak.
Coincidentally, the arrival of ‘Dead Set’ on Netflix falls right before the last ever ‘Big Brother’ UK final, which airs on Channel 5 on Monday.
Three years after ‘Dead Set’, the first three-episode series of ‘Black Mirror’ debuted on Channel 4, with a second series following in 2013.
‘Black Mirror’ then became a smash hit all over the world when it began streaming on Netflix, with the streaming service providing the most recent two series of the dystopian anthology show.
A fifth series is currently in the works, with Charlie Brooker recently claiming the team has included the “most complicated thing” ‘Black Mirror’ has ever attempted in one of the upcoming new episodes.