I'm not some anti-technology person. I think it's often how people would assume that if they don't know me.

"Be Right Back," in which Hayley Atwell brings Domhnall Gleeson back from the dead using his social-media profile, sprang out of an unrelated conversation. Other stories you thrash away at for weeks and weeks.

As long as we've still got crazy "what if" ideas, we can continue [Black Mirror]. It's outpacing reality that's probably the challenge.

What happens often is the script is written and once the director comes on board you have lots of conversations and it mutates again.

The difference between smartphones and cigarettes is this: a cigarette robs 10 minutes from your lifespan, but at least has the decency to wait and withdraw all that time in bulk as you near the end of your life - whereas a smartphone steals your time in the present moment, by degrees. Five minutes here. Five minutes there. Then you look up and you're 85 years old.

I think overseas viewers assume that Black Mirror is written by the Unabomber, essentially - a Ludd­ite, technology-hating, angry old man waving his fist at the App Store.

I'm trying to think overall. Some of our stories [Black Mirror], I think you're right in that they don't tend to have a message.