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Charlie Brooker is Making a 2020 Mockumentary for Netflix Starring Hugh Grant

Photo credit: Esquire
Photo credit: Esquire

From Esquire

About a million years ago (well, back in May) Charlie Brooker decided to take a look at the most cursed year on record with his Antiviral Wipe for BBC Two. Condensing the entire jaw-dropping ineptitude of the British Government in their handling of the Coronavirus pandemic in just 49 minutes was no mean feat, but it turns out Brooker isn’t finished with satirising 2020 just yet.

Deadline reports that Brooker is making a mockumentary about this year for Netflix - the streaming site that currently broadcasts his Black Mirror anthologies - and that Hugh Grant is set to play a starring role in the one-off programme.

Fresh from the success of his role as Jonathan Fraser in The Undoing - despite those mixed feelings about the ending - Grant let slip to Vulture that he would be working with Brooker on his newest project: “I’m doing a thing tomorrow, actually. Charlie Brooker has written a mockumentary about 2020. It’s for Netflix, and I am a historian who’s being interviewed about the year. I’m pretty repellent, actually! And you’ll like my wig.”

Grant is obviously revelling in his recent revival, which has seen him pivot from the rom-com leading man to these “repellent” roles instead. From the con-artist Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2 to Jeremy Thorpe, the real-life MP accused of conspiracy to murder his gay lover in A Very English Scandal, Grant’s characters have now ascended. He told Vulture: “It’s possible that having done too many romantic comedies, I could now do too many narcissistic villains. But they are fun. Any actor would say the same: The bad guy’s the fun guy.”

The tangent into an obnoxious mockumentary historian is an interesting one, and although Brooker hasn’t revealed any further information, and the broadcast date is still TBC, it’s sure to be a must-watch as we all try to make sense of this wretched year.

Brooker revealed a new focus earlier this year, and told Radio Times: “I’m sort of keen to revisit my comic skill set, so I’ve been writing scripts aimed at making myself laugh.” This bodes well for the mockumentary, as god knows we could all do with a laugh right now too.

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