Is The Kitchen connected to Black Mirror?

The Kitchen is the latest sci-fi dystopian story to hit Netflix – but is it connected to Black Mirror? Here’s what you need to know.

Before standalone movie The Kitchen, there was Black Mirror – a show originally created by Charlie Brooker, moving from its first home of Channel 4 over to Netflix.

Each episode conveys a different dystopian storyline, each taking a look at separate areas of society and plunging them into technological nightmares.

With The Kitchen now on Netflix, is it connected to Black Mirror? Here’s everything you need to know.

Is The Kitchen connected to Black Mirror?

No, The Kitchen isn’t connected to Black Mirror – but there are some similarities.

The official synopsis for The Kitchen reads “In a dystopian future London where all social housing has been eliminated, Izi (Kane Robinson) and Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman) fight to navigate the world as residents of The Kitchen – a community that refuses to abandon their home.

Dystopia is also a word that best describes Black Mirror, with themes such as social housing, community, and technology all forming the backbone of many of its stories. However, there’s one episode in particular that will bear a lot of resemblance – Season 1’s Fifteen Million Merits, which stars The Kitchen co-director Daniel Kaluuya.

In the episode, Bing (Kaluuya) is an innocent soul who falls in love with Abi (Jessica Brown Findlay), and wishes for her to succeed. He spends 15 million credits to help Abi get a chance of a lifetime. Unbeknownst to him (and the rest of the world), contestants are drugged to do whatever the leaders tell them to do on a grimy sleazy talent show.

Though on the surface the storylines appear to be completely different, there are plenty of similarities – aside from Kaluuya – that appear between the two. For example, Izi’s access to The Kitchen radio in his original flat models how Bing accesses his credits in his room during Fifteen Million Merits. Both operate through an intricate and high-tech mirror system that can be activated by the user’s touch.

Their housing surroundings are equally as important, with both housed in a seemingly never-ending and dangerous building block. In Black Mirror, there are no windows, meaning it is difficult to tell where the cast is situated or who’s in control. A similar sentiment is true in The Kitchen, with housing based in an unstable-looking residence built out of ill-fitting materials. In both cases, there’s a heavy marshaled presence that can often lead to violent outbursts.

Both Fifteen Million Merits and The Kitchen also experiment with pioneering social technology. This takes different forms across different Black Mirror storylines but mostly can be seen in the perilous game show and TV network in which Bing ends up entrapped. In the case of The Kitchen, the movie looks at new kinds of funeral care, alongside eventual similarities with Izi’s housing – further resembling Bing’s.