Netflix’s interactive Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch wins Emmy for best TV movie

The choose-your-own adventure episode of Black Mirror won the Emmy for best television movie, beating out Amazon’s King Lear and HBO’s My Dinner with Herve.

Bandersnatch follows a young game designer (Dunkirk’s Fionn Whitehead) as he tries his hand at creating a choose-your-own adventure game based on a choose-your-own-adventure book. The viewer is prompted to pick different choices, starting from the very mundane-seeming “Frosties or Sugar Puffs?” and eventually escalating into potential murder and time travel — with some meta commentary if you make the right choices. Maze Runner’s Will Poulter stars as an infamous game designer show shepherds the young creative, and sends the “movie” barreling in a number of its weirdest directions.

A playthrough of Bandersnatch usually clocks in at an hour, but there are five possible endings, with about a trillion different permutations.

While not the first Netflix title to feature an interactive format, Bandersnatch is the first title aimed for an adult audience. Netflix previously experiment with choose-your-own-adventure mechanics in children’s shows such as Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale and Minecraft: Story Mode. In 2019, Netflix released You Vs. Wild, the Bear Grylls interactive adventure which was definitely less cool than it sounds.