"Nosedive" is the first episode in the third series of the British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. Michael Schur and Rashida Jones wrote the teleplay for the episode, based on a story by series creator and co-showrunner Charlie Brooker, while Joe Wright acted as director. It premiered on Netflix on 21 October 2016, alongside the rest of the third series. The episode is set in a world where people can rate each other from one to five stars, using their smartphones, for every interaction they have, which can impact their socioeconomic status. Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a young woman overly obsessed with her ratings; she finds an opportunity to elevate her ratings greatly and move into a more luxurious residence after being chosen by her popular, highly rated childhood friend Naomi (Alice Eve) as the maid of honour for her wedding.
Under Netflix, the episode was given a much larger budget than the previous episodes of the programme, when it had been under Channel 4. Brooker wrote an outline for the episode, then Schur wrote the first half of the episode and Jones wrote the latter. Production was undertaken in a manner similar to a short film; "Nosedive" was filmed in South Africa, with Seamus McGarvey as director of photography and Joel Collins and James Foster as the production designers. The tone of the episode is less bleak and more comedic than other Black Mirror episodes, with the ending significantly more positive than in episodes of the programme's prior two series.
The episode received mainly positive reviews and is middling in critics' lists of Black Mirror episodes, qualitatively. The pastel visual aesthetics were widely praised, along with Max Richter's soundtrack and Howard's performance. A criticism from several reviewers was the episode's predictability and ending, though the script and comedic undertones were praised by some. Many critics noted the similarity of the episode to real-world app Peeple and China's Social Credit System, along with fictional works about social media with themes of gender and obsession with image. The episode won a Royal Television Society Craft & Design Award. It was nominated for several awards, including a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Howard and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for McGarvey. A board game Nosedive, based on the episode, was released in 2018.
Plot Society has embraced a technology wherein everyone shares their daily activities and user experiences through eye implants and mobile devices where one rates their interactions with others on a scale from one to five stars, cumulatively affecting everyone's socioeconomic status.
Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard) seeks to raise her 4.2 rating to 4.5 for a discount on a luxury apartment at Pelican Cove, as her current lease is expiring and the agent warns that units are in high demand; however, despite her attempts to be outgoing and pleasant, her rating has stagnated. Lacie talks to a consultant who suggests gaining favour from very highly rated people. Lacie uploads a photograph of Mr. Rags, a ragdoll that she and her childhood friend Naomi (Alice Eve) made together. Naomi, who is currently rated 4.8, rates the photo five stars and calls Lacie to announce her engagement, inviting Lacie to deliver a wedding speech as the maid of honour. Learning that the wedding will be attended by hundreds of guests whom all have a rating of 4.7 or above, Lacie accepts the invitation and impulsively commits to the apartment, anticipating that their high ratings will easily secure her the necessary 4.5 score.
On the day of her flight, several mishaps cause people to rate Lacie negatively. This drops her rating down to 4.183. At the airport, her flight is cancelled and she cannot book a seat on an alternate flight without being a 4.2 or above. This agitates Lacie and she causes a scene, upon which security penalizes her by putting her on "double damage" and subtracting a full point for 24 hours. Because of her low rating, Lacie can only rent an older car to drive to the wedding, which she cannot recharge when it runs out of power. She is forced to hitchhike with Susan (Cherry Jones), a truck driver with a rating of 1.4. Susan reveals she used to be a 4.6, and tells Lacie that she used to care about her rating until her late husband was passed over for vital cancer treatment because his score was deemed not high enough. Susan says she is much freer without obsessing over ratings.
While Lacie is on the route to the wedding, Naomi tells her to not come, as her severely reduced rating will negatively impact Naomi's own ratings. Enraged, Lacie reaches the wedding and sneaks in during the reception. She grabs the microphone and starts giving the speech she had written but begins insulting Naomi, revealing that as teenagers she enabled Lacie's bulimia and slept with her high school boyfriend. Security attempts to apprehend her, upon which Lacie grabs a knife and threatens to behead Mr. Rags. Still on double damage, the guests downvote her in droves, causing her rating to drop below one star. Lacie is imprisoned with her eye implants removed, but is genuinely happy for the first time in a long time. She and the man in the cell opposite hers (Sope Dirisu), realizing they can now speak without worrying about being rated, gleefully hurl insults at each other.
Production
"Nosedive" is the first episode of the third series of Black Mirror; all six episodes in this series were released on Netflix simultaneously on 21 October 2016. Brooker says it was selected to be the season premiere "partly to slightly ease people in", at Netflix's recommendation. Alongside "San Junipero", "Nosedive" was first shown in 2016 ahead of its Netflix release at the Toronto International Film Festival. Two days prior to the series' release on Netflix, Brooker hinted that "Nosedive" is "a pastel, playful satire about modern insecurity."
Whilst series one and two of Black Mirror were shown on Channel 4 in the UK, in September 2015 Netflix commissioned the series for 12 episodes (split into two series of six episodes), and in March 2016 it outbid Channel 4 for the rights to distributing the third series, with a bid of $40 million. Due to its move to Netflix, the show had a larger budget than in previous series, which one critic suggests is responsible for the "impressive line-up" that was noted by many reviewers. Another critic called this episode the show's "most ambitious yet"; due to its larger episode order, series 3 was also able to vary its genre and tone more than previous series. One reviewer also noted that "Nosedive" contained "only American characters".
In November 2016, to tie in with the episode, Netflix released a tongue-in-cheek app called Rate Me. The app allows users to rate people, by their Twitter handle, and view their own rating and the ratings of others.
Conception and writing
The episode is based on an idea by series creator Charlie Brooker for a movie; he and executive producer Annabel Jones pitched the idea to several movie companies in the United States after the first series of Black Mirror, but it was not commissioned. The original idea was of a comedy similar to Brewster's Millions, focused on a high status person trying to reduce their ranking in 24 hours. Later, Brooker wrote either a three or four page outline for the episode, wanting it to be "comedic, darkly". This version took inspiration from 1987 film Planes, Trains and Automobiles, in which the character is on a journey—for "Nosedive", this was initially a character travelling to an important work presentation.
Rashida Jones and Michael Schur wrote the episode. Known for comedy and sitcoms, the pair had previously worked together on many shows, including Parks and Recreation, but had never written anything together before "Nosedive". A fan of Brooker's works, Rashida Jones had been in contact with him for a few years beforehand and after the programme's move to Netflix, he suggested that she could write an episode. Schur was also a fan of Black Mirror and Rashida Jones suggested that they could co-write the episode. With Jones and Schur on board, the main character changed from someone focused on playing the ratings system to a people-pleaser, the work presentation was changed to a wedding and the idea of Lacie having a childhood talisman was introduced. Lacie's brother was originally an ex-boyfriend.
Schur wrote the first half of the episode (up to Lacie beginning her travel in a rented car), while Rashida Jones wrote the second half, and the two then combined their scripts. In the initial draft, the episode ended with Lacie's work presentation going viral and her achieving fame. The final version of the ending showed Lacie in a jail cell, the rating device removed from her, allowing her to find freedom. An unused idea was that of rage rooms, where characters would go to destroy things to let out their anger.
In 2016, Schur had an account on Twitter but not Facebook or Instagram, as "there's a bunch of strangers talking shit about you in there", and Jones expressed a similarly negative attitude, stating "I do have very strong, very conflicted feelings about rating systems and social media." Brooker notes that "you are rewarded for having a more extreme opinion" on social media; in the episode, as on the internet, almost all ratings given are either one or five stars. Similarly, Schur opines that social media causes people to exaggerate their behaviour, particularly their rudeness.
Jones believes that the episode, as with all Black Mirror episodes, "pushes you into the near future", while Schur considers it to be more of a "parallel reality". Brooker has described the episode as "like a cross between Pleasantville and The Truman Show". Jones says the belief that "women are taught to be liked, and men are taught to be powerful", credited to Sheryl Sandberg, is relevant to the episode, with Schur agreeing that Lacie's gender is important to the story, though Schur notes that edited images on social media are causing negative body image issues for men as well.
Filming
The episode was the third in series three to be filmed. Joe Wright directed the episode, Seamus McGarvey was director of photography and the production designers, working for VFX company Painting Practice, were Joel Collins and James Foster. The episode was shot in four weeks in Knysna, South Africa, a coastal town five hours (by car) from Cape Town chosen as it felt like an American coastal town. Series three episode "San Junipero" was also filmed in South Africa.
In an interview with Variety, McGarvey noted that the episode was shot in 4K resolution at the request of Netflix. He said the colour scheme was a mixture of duck-egg blue, "peppermint green" and "strange peach colors", and that props and "even the drinks people are drinking" were chosen with care to create a "sickly pastel feel". Wright said that he made almost no changes to the script's dialogue. Brooker has said that Wright's pastel treatment was a "very strong visual idea that we had not foreseen".
Brooker pointed out that directors of Black Mirror episodes (in this case, Wright) have more "power" than in serialised television shows, as "it is like making a short film", and he said that Wright had "been feeling quite bruised after doing Pan, and [Black Mirror] was a good thing for him to get his teeth into which wasn't the full five-year commitment of a movie". McGarvey had previously worked with Wright. Watching rushes from the filming, Brooker was initially sceptical about Wright's saccharine style, but began to understand it as the filming progressed and the music was added. The scenes in which Lacie is driving utilise a computer-generated landscape designed by Dan May, the episode's art director. She was initially planned to drive through multiple landscapes such as a desert, but this was changed for budget reasons.