Quick: where were you in January 2015? If you can somehow summon the wherewithal to think back through the ichorous fog of an unprecedentedly hateful political season, you may remember a simpler time. A more innocent time. A time when---at least if you were in the US---you probably spent a few blissful hours watching Black Mirror, the creepy British sci-fi anthology that had just landed on Netflix. In the span of a mere six epsiodes and a later Christmas special, series creator Charlie Brooker managed to extrapolate from our always-connected, smartphone-obsessed society all kinds of dark near-future tales. Would memories one day be recordable---only to be used as leverage? Would the gamification of fitness curdle into servitude? And what about pigs, man? With *Black Mirror'*s imminent return upon us (as a Netflix exclusive, we couldn't help but notice with a tiny shudder of foreboding), please accept this not-at-all-humble ranking of the first two seasons. And yes, we're giving bonus points for prescience.
Bing (Daniel Kaluuya) lives in a futuristic pod—think: Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century with none of the space-pop fun—where every wall is a screen and every activity costs credits, earned by pedaling a stationary bike. To get out, one must pay fifteen million Merits for the chance to perform on an X-Factor-style show where a select few’s lives are changed. The set design is beautiful and the premise is interesting, but the consumerism/screen-addiction/corruption-by-fame allegory feels a touch too obvious for the episode to shine.
If Twilight Zone inspired Black Mirror, this episode takes that Serling subervision and boils it down to maximum potency. A woman wakes up in a house disoriented, with no idea who she is, and navigates a city full of people who can only stand silently and take pictures or videos of her with their phones. She’s chased by masked gunmen and has only precious few guides in the extended chase which lasts most of the episode. For nearly 30 minutes, it’s a diatribe against screen-induced stupor—until “White Bear” upends the proceedings with the harshest rug-pull of the series. The social commentary lurches violently away from device obsession to something that feels like a mix of Ray Bradbury and Shirley Jackson, somehow managing to encompass theme parks, reality television, and the criminal justice system.
A popular late-night talk show features a recurring segment of Waldo a foul-mouthed children's cartoon character punking celebrities (think Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, crossed with the real-time animated versions of Trump and Clinton that show up on Late Night With Stephen Colbert). When a local politician falls prey to Waldo's anything-goes sass, the network goes nuts, and exhorts the Waldo---or at least the guy playing him---to take the parliamentary piss by running for office. Things go...well, they go about as well as you could have imagined in the days before a reality-TV star managed to rise to prominence using the exact same tactics, and then secure a major party's presidential nomination. You win this round, Charlie Brooker. You win this round.
The series premiere begins with a start, and ends with a miserably memorable finish. England's prime minister (Rory Kinnear) wakes up to news that the royal princess has been kidnapped—and her captor wants the PM to commit a very specific, very vulgar act on live television. With a pig. The episode excels because it relies exclusively on current technology employed to terrible ends; with YouTube, Twitter, and an understanding of CGI technology, a malevolent lone wolf forces England’s elected leader into the worst. livestream. ever. (There but for the grace of Facebook Live go we.) Despite the absurdity of the premise, the situation somehow rings true by the end of the 44 minutes.
Jon Hamm had already shown up in enough weirdo comedies to prove that he was more than just Don Draper, but taking a role in this exceedingly dark triptych of tales cemented his weirdo cred for years to come. Hamm and Rafe Spall, hanging out in a mysterious snowed-in cabin, trade tales of augmented reality, manipulation, psychological torture, devotion, and murder---and ultimately, this being Black Mirror, a mindbending twist. AND THEN ANOTHER ONE. If you're keeping count, that's three stories nested inside two other stories, two twists, and who knows how many milliseconds actually elapsed while we thought were watching a 75-minute mega-episode.
A distraught widow (Hayley Atwell) is reunited with her late husband (Domhnall Gleeson) when he returns from the grave, first as a series of emails and IMs, and then as an in-the-flesh (but hardly human) "real" person. What follows makes for one of Black’s most satisfyingly emotional installments—a portrayal of a stunted relationship that’s less about the divide between man and machine, and more about the way grief alternately enevlops and empowers us all. And while there are plenty of humdinger twists to be found on the series, the quiet final moments of "Back" might just stick with you the longest.
One of the first Black Mirror episodes to spur stateside attention—Robert Downey Jr. even optioned it for a movie—“Entire History” is the way-too-plausible, slowly devastating story of two young parents (played by Toby Kebbel and Jodie Whittaker) who record and replay their lives using high-tech implants. But when one of them starts digging too deeply into the past, a cruel secret is unearthed, making their happy lives yet another distant memory. “History” is Black at its best: An observant, sometimes bleakly funny tale of how we interact not only with technology, but with each other.
