“We just said, ‘We have this streaming platform called ‘Streamberry’ in this episode…can we make it look like Netflix?’ Brooker explained in an interview for the latest issue of Empire According to the filmmaker, “They left and came back pretty quickly – weirdly quickly – and said, ‘Yeah, okay’.” actually to things we’ve heard about Netflix before, like if the streamer didn’t care when the short-lived comedy “Blockbuster” made jokes about streaming empires, or when Netflix gave a platform to the true crime parody “American Vandal” despite the fact that it was clearly parodying docs like “Making A Murderer.” Netflix certainly has its issues, but the team there clearly has a sense of humor to his subject.
In fact, Brooker said he quietly hoped for more pullback from Netflix, just to make the episode more interesting. “There was no resistance, I can say. Which is a little disappointing, because it would be nice to be able to say ‘I did it anyway because I’m an anarchist!’ But no.” Perhaps the content of the episode – in which Joan randomly discovers a prestige series made about her life and eventually meets Hayek Pinault in person – will in itself be very anarchic.