Choose your own TV adventure with ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’

Back in early 2017, Netflix approached Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones with an unusual idea.

The streaming service had been experimenting with interactive kids content, giving young viewers the ability to choose their own path through a story with a series multiple-choice questions that could be easily answered with the help of a TV remote.

Now, Netflix was ready to bring the same format to an adult audience – and Black Mirror seemed like a perfect fit. Except the two creators weren’t having any of it.

Brooker recalled his initial response: “No way!”

Jones agreed, in part because she had never really liked prior examples of interactive storytelling. “To me, they always felt a bit gimmicky,” she said.

But when they started to discuss ideas for future episodes of the show a few weeks later, they came up with a plot that really only worked as an interactive movie.

The result is Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Netflix’s first-ever interactive movie for adults, which debuted last week.

Set in 1984, Bandersnatch is the story of geeky teenager Stefan (played by Fionn Whitehead of Dunkirk fame) who sets out to turn a multiple-choice science-fiction book by the same title into a pioneering computer game that also presents the player with a series of choices.

Early on, we learn that eccentric author of the original Bandersnatch book descended into madness while writing the multiple-choice adventure, ultimately killing his wife.

And it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that Stefan is struggling with his own inner demons – and single-handedly turning the book of a madman into a highly complex multiple-choice computer game doesn’t exactly seem to improve his mental health.

Brooker said he could empathise with those feelings. “What we were trying to do was what Stefan was trying to do,” he said. “There were many points where we felt it was driving us crazy.”

Luckily, Brooker and Jones had the Netflix product team to keep them sane. Following the production of interactive kids titles like Puss In Boots: Trapped In An Epic Tale and Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile, Netflix director of product innovation Carla Engelbrecht realised that the company was on to something.

“There is so much more that we can do than just linear television,” she said.

Photo: Netflix

More complexity

But while younger viewers may be fine with relatively simple choices, adult audiences clearly require more complexity, which can be a huge logistical challenge.

That’s why Netflix engineers built the company’s very own script-writing tool for branched narratives, dubbed Branch Manager.

The tool allows creatives to build complex narratives that include loops, guiding viewers back to the main story when they strayed too far, giving them a chance of a do-over, if you will – something that Jones and Brooker artfully incorporated into the story.

At one point, one of the key characters even tells Stefan that he chose the wrong path, leading him to realise: “I should try again!”

Bandersnatch comes with five possible endings. Viewers who choose the quickest path, and decide against any do-overs, can make it through the film in around 40 minutes. The average viewing time is around 90 minutes.

Altogether, there are over a trillion unique permutations of the story. However, this also includes relatively simple iterations that don’t necessarily alter the story itself.

For instance, one of the first decisions is helping Stefan to choose which cereal to eat in the morning. “We want (viewers) to have a successful choice early on,” said Engelbrecht.

Other design decisions that went into the creation of Bandersnatch are more subtle, and sit somewhere between product design and storytelling.

For instance, the team had to figure out the right pacing for an interactive story like this. Give viewers too many choices, and they may tire of all those decisions. Let the plot go on too long without a choice, and half the audience may have misplaced their remote controls. “We talk about cadence a lot,” said Engelbrecht.

Jones and Brooker also recalled pushing Netflix’s tools to their limits with Bandersnatch.

“It kept expanding, even when we were in pre-production,” said Brooker.

“We deliberately pushed what was going to be possible.” Until one day, they hit the wall, or rather the boundaries of Netflix’s Branch Manager tool. “The story outline crashed,” he recalled – a first for the seasoned TV writer.

Interestingly, the same thing happens to Stefan during the final sprint to complete his interactive computer game. And the similarities don’t end there. Brooker and Jones skillfully play with the motives of branched stories, repeatedly throwing off their viewers just when they think they’ve got the hang of the whole multiple-choice thing.

The duo also incorporates the viewers themselves into the story and even gives the Netflix brand a cameo.