"White Christmas" is a 2014 Christmas special of the British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Carl Tibbetts, first airing on Channel 4 on 16 December 2014. Agreed as a one-off special after Channel 4 rejected potential series three scripts, the episode was the last to air before the programme moved to Netflix.
The episode explores three stories told by Matt (Jon Hamm, who was the first American actor to participate in an episode) and Joe (Rafe Spall) from a remote cabin on Christmas Day. The first follows a man attempting to seduce a woman at a Christmas party while receiving remote guidance; the second sees Matt at his job training "cookies", digital clones of people; and the third shows Joe obsessed over an ex-fiancée after the relationship abruptly ends. Topics depicted include pickup artistry, artificial intelligence and consciousness, as well as the concept of Internet blocking extrapolated into real life.
Filming took place in London with a restrictive budget and timescale. Easter egg references are made to each previous episode and a "Z-Eyes" technology which records hearing and vision has the same design and similar functionality to the "grain" from series one's "The Entire History of You". The episode received mostly positive reviews and was nominated for multiple awards, including an International Emmy Award for Best Actor with Spall as the nominee.
Plot
Joe Potter (Rafe Spall) and Matt Trent (Jon Hamm), have lived together in a cabin for five years but barely speak. On Christmas Day, Matt explains why he ended up in the cabin. He used to work as an advisor that would talk less confident or social people through the process of meeting women using "Z-Eyes" – implants that transmit the user's vision and hearing. Some members would watch voyeuristically and contribute advice while Matt relayed advice in real time. One client, Harry (Rasmus Hardiker), crashed an office Christmas party and met the mentally ill Jennifer (Natalia Tena), who mistook Harry's communication with the group for auditory hallucinations similar to her own. She subsequently invited him home and poisoned them both in a murder-suicide.
Matt then discusses his other former job, training "cookies"—digital clones of people stored in an egg-shaped object—as personal assistants. He describes the experience of Greta's (Oona Chaplin) cookie, which refused to be an assistant only to relent once Matt made six months pass in the cookie's world in a matter of seconds.
Joe then opens up about his own past, explaining that he was "blocked" by his fiancée Beth (Janet Montgomery) after the two fought over her decision to have an abortion, causing them to see each other as grey silhouettes and preventing him from contacting her. Months later, Joe confronted her still-pregnant silhouette and was arrested. Each Christmas Eve, Joe travelled to Beth's father's house to secretly watch Beth and her daughter, to whom the block extends. After Beth died in a train accident, the block was removed, and Joe went to the home to see Beth's daughter, only to discover that she was the product of an affair. When Beth's father confronted him, Joe bludgeoned him to death with a snow globe and fled, leaving the girl alone. Seeking help, she wandered into the snowy wilderness, where she froze to death.
While Joe tells the story, the cabin gradually transforms into Beth's father's house. It is revealed that Joe and Matt are in a cookie, the five years resulting from altered perception of time, and Joe is a cookie clone who has just given testimony which will be used to convict the real Joe. For his service, Matt avoids imprisonment for his role in Harry's death, but he is now registered as a sex offender, permanently blocked by everyone and will have to live the rest of his life as a social pariah. Meanwhile, an officer sets the Joe cookie to experience time at 1,000 years per minute, with Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day"—which played as Joe killed Beth's father—on repeat.
Production Following the second series of Black Mirror, Channel 4 agreed to a third series of four episodes on the condition that detailed synopses of episodes were given. After presenting some ideas, series creator Charlie Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones were told that they "weren't very Black Mirror", leaving the show in a limbo situation. A year later, Brooker and Jones were able to negotiate a 90-minute Christmas special, "White Christmas". The episode incorporated one of the ideas they had pitched, "Angel of the Morning". It was the last Black Mirror episode produced under Channel 4; following this, the series moved to Netflix. "White Christmas" aired on 16 December 2014 in the United Kingdom.
Conception and writing The episode was written by Brooker. Inspirations for the episode include Dead of Night and Twilight Zone: The Movie, both of which are anthologies. The setting of a spaceship was briefly considered. The first story about dating featured Matt, Harry and Jennifer. It was inspired by Brooker's observations of people on the street using Bluetooth headsets for calls, who looked like they were talking to themselves "as if they had a mental illness". The horse anecdote was inspired by Brooker reading "bullshit ice-breakers" used by pickup artists. Brooker later commented that the story was timely in the context of pickup artist Julien Blanc being denied a visa to the United Kingdom.
The second story, where Matt sets up Greta's cookie, was inspired by the comedic idea of someone who "put a consciousness into a toaster", and the toaster then falls in love with them. Brooker had considered this idea for a while, and realised it was a "fucking nightmare" rather than a love story. One draft of the story showed Greta's cookie watching Greta play with her kids, realising that she would never be able to hug her children again. This scene was rejected as "too weird and nasty" for the episode, but later used in series four episode "Black Museum".
The third story is about Joe and his girlfriend Beth. It was based on an idea from Brooker's 2001 series Unnovations in which a pair of glasses showed homeless people as cartoon characters. With the invention of Google Glass, this looked more possible in reality. The idea of blocking on social media was also considered. The ending takes inspiration from Stephen King's 1981 short story "The Jaunt" and the 1982 series finale of Sapphire & Steel.
Casting The episode was directed by Carl Tibbetts, who had previously directed series two episode "White Bear". Jon Hamm was cast as Matt Trent; he had enjoyed the programme on DirecTV after Bill Hader recommended it to him. In mid-2014, Hamm was in the U.K. for press appearances and asked his agent if they knew anyone who knew Brooker: by chance, the agent had just signed him and they met up along with Jones. In the first draft, Matt was cheerful and cockney to contrast with Joe. Whilst the original version portrayed Matt as slightly grating, Hamm was keen for his character to be likeable and affable as a contrast to his odious actions.
Joe is played by Rafe Spall, who had previously read a script for another Black Mirror episode. Spall welcomed an anthology series role, having found that he needed a "huge amount of energy" to commit to long-running serialised shows so that he could understand all relevant storylines. Oona Chaplin was cast as Greta, roughly two days before filming, while working in Los Angeles.
Filming, music and editing For the setting, a slightly futuristic London and a world in which the characters lived on boats were both considered. However, the episode had a very limited budget. Filming took place in disparate areas of London within a short period of time, which posed a challenge. Sets were built at Twickenham, which would be used during production of later Black Mirror series. The cabin was designed to look timeless, with Matt's outfit looking cleaner than the environment, while Joe's is warm. The episode was shot in October 2014, during a period when Hamm and Spall both had heavy colds.
The episode opens with Joe and the viewer first sees Matt through his eyes. Joe is initially very quiet and not able to recall precisely why he is in the cabin. Every time the cabin is shown, some details are changed until it becomes the house in which Joe commits the murder. The cooker, work surface, fireplace and clock are some of these details. Additionally, at one point Joe hears a noise which is his cell hatch sliding shut as someone checks on him.
The soundtrack was composed by Jon Opstad. The colour palettes, costumes and soundtrack of the three stories are designed to be similar to each other, to give the episode an overarching identity. The first story has monochrome tones and a "lopsided weirdness" to its soundtrack; Jennifer's dress is made of navy leather and mesh to signify her role as a dominatrix. Unprecedented for the show, the segment reuses technology from another episode: after several designs for the Z-Eyes, it was decided that the "grain" device from series one episode "The Entire History of You" should be used.
Jetlagged, Chaplin fell asleep during some of her early scenes, which required her to lie down on an operating table. Greta wears an outfit similar to a kimono, to indicate her relaxed demeanour, while her cookie wears a neoprene fabric. The score for the second story is "crisp, clean [and] sterile", using digital synths to contrast with the rest of the soundtrack. The third story changes "from romance to tragedy", so its score incorporates a viola. A scene where Beth struggles to get a vomiting Joe into a taxi was cut from filming due to time constraints.
The ending shows Joe smashing the radio repeatedly, as it reappears each time. It was decided on the day that this should be filmed in one continuous take, with stagehands quickly replacing the radio on the table; this was difficult due to their limited supply of radios. A shot of Joe smashing the snow globe, only for it to reappear, was cut. During filming, Brooker had an idea for the closing moments, which show the camera continually panning out from the cabin to show it inside a snow globe. The effect used many different takes as well as visual effects. Editing took place up to the day of its press screening at Channel 4, leading Brooker to delay work on his annual review special 2014 Wipe for the BBC.
Analysis
The episode has a dark tone, as with other Black Mirror installments, and aspects of horror. For instance, Ellen Jones of The Independent found the episode "genuinely unsettling". Louisa Mellor of Den of Geek found it to additionally contain elements of pathos and humour. IGNs Daniel Krupa found it to be a "macabre morality tale" that drew from "the potential misery" associated with Christmas. Mark Monahan of The Telegraph compared the storyline in which Harry is poisoned to "The Landlady", a short story by Roald Dahl also featuring a poisoner. Making a second Dahl comparison, Monahan found the segment with Greta similar to "William and Mary", in which William is revived after death in the form of a few functioning body parts that lack agency.
The settings accentuate the themes. According to Shelli Nicole in Architectural Digest, the "stark white, hyperminimal, and eerily pristine" scenes of Greta's home, cookie and hospital room contribute to the recurring feeling of detachment. Mellor noted that Matt sharpening knives at one point heightened a subtext of "menace and unpredictability" between Matt and Joe, while several prison-related references foreshadow the twist, including Joe's room layout, the noise of a cell hatch opening, Matt's line "it's not an interrogation" and Joe's line "it's a job, not a jail".