No, No, see, constantly referring to it as a "story" and plugging it as an entertaining whodunnit was serious journalism.

In the UK they tend to apply the specific problem or group to it. Benefits Street, for instance, was roundly decried as Poverty Porn.

The Issue is, I think, that this is a true crime story approached with the house style of This American Life. It's not a style that's very well suited to dealing with this kind of material because the show's grammar and tone were developed to deal with familiar essays, human interest, very small scale stories. It…

Except it was sold like that by Glass and Koenig. Fuck, Ira specifically encouraged audiences to approach it like a whodunnit in the pilot episode.

It's classism is what it is. It's like how it took three series before Downton Abbey was consistently referred to as a soap in the US.

I can understand why they did it. There are a bunch of superficial plot similarities between the two specials, and since Black Mirror's on a different channel they only would've really become aware of it with a week or less to go.

Yeah but radio times and others stated in promo materials that it was the Whizzard tune, and all the diegetic sound in that scene is fucked up. Classic sign of bad ADR.

Anyone notice that the sound is wonky while Shona's dancing?

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

Clickhole is really funny but it's probably not easy to monetize because it's basically The Onion without a paywall.

From all accounts he's largely checked out on his job because, well, c'mon. So you're going to get some publicist-written email. There's a reason the rumours about him sending out actors to portray him were credible.

Those are normal perils of the world that we live in. I mean, pollution and so on? Those are externalities of our system. While they are fucked, they're business as usual because any given system is fucked and involves ruining a large number of people. These problems are gradually changing, evolving, being worked on,…

How is it not serious? It's a major act of corporate espionage carried out by a foreign state. People's jobs and financial information are in jeopardy. It's a big deal.

Uh, the appeal hearing has a date, and has since early November.

Actually, Adnan has a new appeal hearing in January. I think that Koenig and Friends knew that it was being pursued somewhat successfully before they started releasing the podcast, and that the conclusion we're going to get is going to focus on that appeal and how the evidence we've heard so far factors in.

Well, originally it was more of a big-budget thriller, and it became the smaller, more intimidate story because Brooker actually showed Armstrong the budget and slapped some sense into him.

It's very variable in quality. The last episode of series two is hot burning diaper garbage, and some of what it's playing off of doesn't really translate as well outside of the UK.

I wonder if the newfound attention is gonna be enough to get the Downey Jr. film off the ground.

Not really. Hamm's mentioned it on Lauren Laverne's radio show and the Q&A at the screening, and when I looked it up I found a bunch of tweets from people working at Variety.

Supposedly he actually flew to London and had his agent set up a general with Charlie Brooker (The Writer-Producer behind Black Mirror) specifically to ask for a part on Black Mirror because any show where the Prime Minister has to fuck a pig is extremely his jam.