The new season of Black Mirror is every bit as surprising, gripping, bleak and blackly comic as the previous three.
But something struck us when we watched the episode, 'Black Museum' – a surprising link between Charlie Brooker's latest chiller and professional idiot Karl Pilkington.
'Black Museum' tells us a series of interconnected short stories, one of which follows a loving couple – Carrie and Jack – and, be warned, there are spoilers from here on out.
Their bliss is interrupted when Carrie is hit by a car and left in a coma. Devastated, Jack is approached by an unsavoury scientist type who convinces him that, by way of extraordinary new technology, he can have Carrie's mind installed in his own brain.
"We only use 40% of our brain capacity," says the scientist. "There is this whole other 60% of our noggin hanging around like an empty Airbnb. We can fit another whole consciousness into that unused space."
(This is based on the old myth that we only use 10% of our brains. But, to quote this article from Scientific American: "It's not that we use 10 percent of our brains, merely that we only understand about 10 percent of how it functions.")
Jack agrees to the procedure and has Carrie's consciousness implanted in the 'dormant' part of his brain, allowing the two to communicate again.
Now, here's where things get interesting...
10 years ago, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington were topping the podcast charts with The Ricky Gervais Show, which saw Gervais and Merchant take Pilkington to task for his confused but very funny take on the world.
In a 2007 episode, Pilkington reveals that he recently had a meeting with two film producers and pitched them a film. Of course, it never got made, but Karl's idea is strikingly similar to the Carrie / Jack plot from 'Black Museum'.
He picks "Clive Warren" (he meant Clive Owen) and Rebecca De Mornay as the stars of his film, and says of the plot, "They're going out together 'an that. You're thinking, 'Oh, they've got a nice life...' then he walks out the house, gets hit by a bus.
"So Clive Warren's dead – she's devastated."
So far, so 'Black Museum'. But the similarities don't end there...
"I've read a thing about how... you've actually got a full brain, [but] you can run it on half," Karl tells Ricky and Steve. "Chances are, he's not going to come out of that coma, but his brain is still awake. [The doctors] say, 'D'you want half of his brain in yer head? What will happen is, he's gone, but you'll have his thoughts'."
Sure enough, Rebecca, like Jack, has Clive's consciousness implanted in her brain. Or as Karl puts it, "She's Rebecca de Mornay, but now and again with him chipping in with a bit of voiceover."
All this is pretty uncanny, right? But the similarities continue!
In 'Black Museum', the brain procedure ends up having negative consequences – tensions flare between Jack and Carrie, as he finds it difficult having her inside his head 24/7.
In one sequence, Jack checks out another woman and gets a tongue-lashing from Carrie. Eventually, he ends up pursuing a new romance.
Karl's story goes down a similar route, with Rebecca furious when her mental link with Clive reveals he was having an affair.
"She hears [Clive's] voice go, 'Lesley, where are ya?' – her name's not Lesley," Karl explained. "She's thinking, 'Who's Lesley?'"
Of course, Pilkington's idea is utterly ridiculed and torn apart by Gervais and Merchant. "What are you talking about?!" Gervais rages. "Why would I have someone's brain in my head when they're dead?!"
Gervais goes on to call Karl's idea "the most ludicrous idea for a film I've ever heard", "the ramblings of a mental case" and, most biting of all, "the worst idea I have ever heard, for any piece of art".
Hmmm... we wonder what Ricky would make of 'Black Museum'? Because the similarities really are startling. And that's before we get into the episode's final twist involved a toy monkey – just the sort of thing Karl might've come up with...
Black Mirror is available to watch now on Netflix. You can listen to Karl Pilkington's movie idea in full over here.
