Jon Hamm-starring Black Mirror special to imagine blocking people in real life

Aiming to engender a little “Yuletide techno-paranoia” that doesn’t involve walking your mother-in-law through her universal remote again, Channel 4 is plotting a Black Mirror Christmas special, set to air on December 25 in both the U.K. and the U.S. Like previous episodes of Charlie Brooker’s darkly brilliant sci-fi satire, Black Mirror: White Christmas will be an anthology, featuring three separate tales. Unlike previous episodes, they will all star professed Black Mirror fan Jon Hamm, who will also unspool those tales like a particularly handsome Cryptkeeper, or a less horny David Duchovny from Red Shoe Diaries.

Now Channel 4 has also released some preview photos, along with some details on what those tales will involve. According to the synopsis, White Christmas takes place in a “mysterious and remote snowy outpost,” where Hamm and Rafe Spall’s characters trade stories about their lives. Said stories will see Hamm “offering an unusual form of romantic guidance to an inexperienced young man” (guidance that is quite possibly, “Why don’t you just let me take over your girlfriend here… I’m Jon Hamm”). They’ll also see him watching Oona Chaplin play a woman who’s “thrust headlong into a nightmarish world of ‘smart’ gadgetry,” otherwise known as the Apple Store.

But perhaps most intriguing of all is a story that imagines a world where you can “block” people in real life, just like you can on Twitter and Facebook. That vision of Utopia was accompanied by this image of Jon Hamm, talking to an average Twitter user who has some opinions on Ferguson.

The synopsis promises that all three stories will connect into “a suitably unsettling whole”—perfect for watching with a restless, uncomprehending audience composed of people from your own Facebook feed, whom you will promise you would never want to “block,” lord no.

 
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