section_path: Production/Series 1
section_name: Series 1
paragraph_text: Series 1
  
  The series's inception was in 2010. Brooker and Jones had begun to work together on Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, a television review programme which aired from 2006 to 2008. The first pitch for Black Mirror, to the head of comedy at Channel 4, was for eight half-hour episodes by different authors. Technology was a lesser focus, and the worlds were larger and more detailed, which Jones said was not possible to execute properly in the short runtime. The series was then commissioned for three hour-long episodes. The first script was "Fifteen Million Merits".: 6–13 The second was "Inbound", an episode that was never produced: it was a science fiction adaptation of what was revealed at the end to be a true story about a boy in the Iraq War.: 1:01:00 Concepts from it were later repurposed for "Men Against Fire". The following script pitched became "The National Anthem", the first episode to air. The third episode is "The Entire History of You".: 6–13
  
  The programme was produced by Brooker's production company Zeppotron, for the Dutch media company Endemol. Joel Collins served as production designer, with his company Painting Practice working on visual effects. In the early stages of Black Mirror, Jones was keen to avoid casting comedy actors, as Brooker was previously a comedy writer, and they wanted to distance the series from the genre.: 16, 18 The production occurred concurrent to that of A Touch of Cloth, a satirical police procedural series that Brooker wrote for.: 0:23:00 The series aired weekly from 4 December 2011. "The National Anthem" features Rory Kinnear as a British prime minister who must have sex with a pig for a kidnapped Princess to be released. In "Fifteen Million Merits", Daniel Kaluuya plays Bing and Jessica Brown Findlay plays Abi, two characters in a society where most people must cycle each day to earn currency. "The Entire History of You" follows the married couple Liam and Ffion, played by Toby Kebbell and Jodie Whittaker, respectively, as Liam becomes suspicious of Ffion's relationship to a friend.
  
  The series's inception was in 2010. Brooker and Jones had begun to work together on Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, a television review programme which aired from 2006 to 2008. The first pitch for Black Mirror, to the head of comedy at Channel 4, was for eight half-hour episodes by different authors. Technology was a lesser focus, and the worlds were larger and more detailed, which Jones said was not possible to execute properly in the short runtime. The series was then commissioned for three hour-long episodes. The first script was "Fifteen Million Merits".: 6–13 The second was "Inbound", an episode that was never produced: it was a science fiction adaptation of what was revealed at the end to be a true story about a boy in the Iraq War.: 1:01:00 Concepts from it were later repurposed for "Men Against Fire". The following script pitched became "The National Anthem", the first episode to air. The third episode is "The Entire History of You".: 6–13
  
  The programme was produced by Brooker's production company Zeppotron, for the Dutch media company Endemol. Joel Collins served as production designer, with his company Painting Practice working on visual effects. In the early stages of Black Mirror, Jones was keen to avoid casting comedy actors, as Brooker was previously a comedy writer, and they wanted to distance the series from the genre.: 16, 18 The production occurred concurrent to that of A Touch of Cloth, a satirical police procedural series that Brooker wrote for.: 0:23:00 The series aired weekly from 4 December 2011. "The National Anthem" features Rory Kinnear as a British prime minister who must have sex with a pig for a kidnapped Princess to be released. In "Fifteen Million Merits", Daniel Kaluuya plays Bing and Jessica Brown Findlay plays Abi, two characters in a society where most people must cycle each day to earn currency. "The Entire History of You" follows the married couple Liam and Ffion, played by Toby Kebbell and Jodie Whittaker, respectively, as Liam becomes suspicious of Ffion's relationship to a friend.