Black Mirror is modern, low-key British sci-fi at its best: clever, dry, and terrifying.
Read more: We ranked all the episodes in Black Mirror series three
Written mostly by writer, presenter and cynic Charlie Brooker, series one and two are diverse and often distinctly British sets of episodes. When America is often seen as dominating the cultural sphere, Black Mirror is one of the most interesting television series’ to hit our UK screens.
The new series may have just come to Netflix with a larger budget, but it's not the money that makes Black Mirror. Catch up on these old episodes and see for yourself.
6. Fifteen Million Merits
It’s fair to be wary of Black Mirror for potentially pushing an unsophisticated anti-tech stance.
Unfortunately for Fifteen Million Merits, an episode that depicts a dystopian world where you have to earn merits by running on a machine, it falls into that easy trap.
The premise, where you can win yourself out of a mysterious prison if you enter a reality TV show, which it turns out loves displays of violence and suicidal behaviour, is simplistic.
The narrative feels limited and the message - that we live in poverty, and reality TV shows marketise the vulnerable - isn’t very nuanced.
5. The Waldo Moment
When we first watched this episode, we would have placed it lower down the list due to its absurd extension of voter apathy and anti-establishment sentiment. Unfortunately, this is now a tough watch post a US election where an underqualified caricature won over a unbelievably experienced candidate. It’s still a great episode that taps into our very real political disengagement and the danger of populism. Although the “avatar” metaphor is inelegant, it makes for a poignant watch.
4. White Bear
This thrilling episode leaves the viewer largely in the dark until the dystopian reveal at the end. Much like San Junipero - but more sinister - the twist gives an insight into the potentially horrifying implication of how we could use technology as punishment or retribution. Without giving too much away, the episode grapples with the issues of dangerous spectatorship and mob mentalities, while delivering a fast-paced terrifying episode.
3. National Anthem
Our ex-Prime Minister put his penis in a pig. This is both the premise to this episode, and an allegedly real thing. Set in the present day, this prophetic masterpiece is black comedy that dabbles in both political satire and the threat hackers pose to our powers when we don’t have tight enough cybersecurity. Rory Kinnear does a great job as a prime minister facing the prospect of having sex with a pig on national television without it seeming stupid, which is a weird thing to accredit an actor for.
2. The Entire History of You
Written by Peep Show’s Jesse Armstrong, this partly POV episode has a fantastic premise that gives way to genius narratives and questions. If we could record our own memory, would we become more untrusting of others? Would we want to know the truth about a lot of our partners’ pasts? It concisely depicts a piece of embedded technology that would, reasonably, be widely accepted, and would probably send us all a little insane. The Peep Show-esq dark humour within a sci-fi drama only adds to its brilliance.
1. Be Right Back
Read more: Charlie Brooker on where Black Mirror will take us next
The episode, where a grieving woman recreates her dead partner’s personality via his social media presence is very close to possible, when you think of the development of chatbots. The episode features Domhnall Gleeson pre About Time and Star Wars along with Marvel’s Hayley Atwell, who both make for a touching real/unreal couple. This episode deals with technology and mortality, while also grappling with the way we conduct ourselves online without being too irritating. Through the lens of grieving partner, the episode examines what it is that makes us, us – a biting comment in a series examining technology's potential threat or extension of our humanity.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
