Blackmere: Charlie Brooker’s detective comedy takes shape

Charlie Brooker’s next detective has a dead partner, a serial killer to catch and a name that belongs on a rain-streaked office door. Paddy Considine will play John Blackmere in Blackmere, a new Netflix series whose first-look images have arrived ahead of an expected 2027 release.

The important detail is its comic intent. This is not simply Brooker moving into straight crime drama: the production is explicitly pitching absurdity beneath the solemn exterior. We rate that combination as a reason to pay attention, particularly with Considine leading a cast that includes Georgina Campbell, Lena Headey and Rory Kinnear. A recommendation to watch the finished programme will have to wait.

What happened

Netflix has unveiled the first images from Blackmere, created and written by Brooker. The premise sends its troubled detective south from Bleakford, a fictional northern city, to London. His partner has died, revenge is on his agenda and a killer committing ritualistic murders needs stopping. On paper, it has enough familiar crime-drama machinery to fill an evidence room.

That familiarity appears to be the point. Promotional material describes the programme as “absurd comedy disguised as an incredibly serious crime thriller”. It is a useful distinction: the promise is not merely a murder investigation with occasional jokes, but a comedy operating inside the conventions of prestige crime television.

Considine is confirmed in the title role. Campbell, Headey and Kinnear are also announced, although the available details do not identify their characters. Any attempt to assign them partners, suspects or villains would be guesswork. For now, this is a cast list rather than a guide to who might have done it.

Behind the scenes, Brooker’s fellow writers are Ben Caudell, Jason Hazeley, Emer Kenny, Daniel Maier and Joel Morris. Al Campbell directs. Brooker and Jessica Rhoades are executive producers, with Annabel Jones, Mark Kinsella and Richard Webb producing. It is worth looking beyond the headline name: the finished programme will be a collaborative undertaking, not a solo monologue with police tape.

The distinction between the announced premise and the actual viewing experience matters here. Still photographs can introduce a character and suggest an atmosphere. They cannot establish comic timing, the rhythm of an interrogation or whether a dramatic pause is building tension or preparing a punchline.

The background

Brooker has already tackled the police procedural in A Touch of Cloth, the spoof starring John Hannah and Suranne Jones. That series is the more useful starting point for understanding his interest in this territory. It treated the genre’s grave performances, tangled investigations and visual habits as material for comedy rather than rules that had to be obeyed.

That history does not make Blackmere a sequel. No connection between the two programmes has been announced. It does, however, establish that Brooker knows this particular comic playground. Crime drama supplies an unusually recognisable vocabulary: the damaged investigator, the personal vendetta, the urgently assembled team and the discovery that makes an already grim case worse.

Considine is an intriguing choice because his screen career covers both menace and comedy. Dead Man’s Shoes demonstrated his capacity for disturbing intensity, while Hot Fuzz placed him inside a densely constructed comic police story. Our interest lies in that range. An actor who can make the serious version convincing gives the joke something solid to push against.

Other casting connections are more direct. Georgina Campbell previously appeared in Black Mirror’s Hang the DJ, while Kinnear played the prime minister in its first episode, The National Anthem. Headey, meanwhile, will be familiar to many viewers as Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. Those credits establish experience, not the kind of characters they will play here.

Manchester provides another clue — with limits

Production took place across Greater Manchester in October 2025 under the working name Project Codename. Locations included Manchester’s Northern Quarter and Bowdon RUFC in Timperley, Trafford. Those are filming locations, not confirmation that the story’s London action has been rewritten or that Bleakford corresponds to a real northern city.

The Manchester Evening News reported modern-dressed principal actors alongside extras in Victorian clothing, with period dressing also present on location. That is an intriguing observation, but it cannot settle how those elements fit together. A flashback, a staged event or something stranger could all produce period costumes on a set. None of those explanations is confirmed.