Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror threatens to be so searingly relevant that it makes all other television look decidedly un-modern. In the first episode, ironically named The National Anthem, the Prime Minister of the UK must have unprotected sex with a pig on live television in order to save the life of the country's much-loved princess (who has been kidnapped). To give you any more information than that would be a disservice, as part of the episode's strength is in watching it unfold. Every contingency you might imagine is taken into account, the whole thing plays out realistically (and not at all for laughs, despite the rather grotesque premise), and the most shocking thing is - it all takes place in just 45 minutes, managing to cut right to the heart of an issue in a way that other television series are unable to manage in several series' worth of episodes. The level of accuracy is outstanding (even down to individual Youtube comments that can be read in the background of some scenes).
*mild spoilers*
Primarily, I saw The National Anthem as being about the irrelevance of the old media in the information age. A D-notice gets put on the media, yet the internet remains uncontrollable and we see political frustrations play out in response to this. There's an implicit element of satire, in that the mainstream/old-order media (the TV networks) can't even talk about these events in any detail. It's ridiculous, but it's also 100% true of how things work now. When we look at things like Facebook and Twitter you can see that the strictures of TV are so far removed from the internet and social networking that they might as well be different planets. Nothing's secret anymore, the average joe has a platform from which to speak to millions of other people.
I can't talk about it any more than that. All I'll say is... you should definitely seek this out and watch it. It's brilliant, the first true work of art of the 21st century.
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