The charm of Black Mirror used to lay in its sense of place, it’s social, national, and cultural identity. The very same thing that charmed me about Mark Fisher’s cultural analysis, the writing of Line of Duty, and the exaggerated social history of Peaky Blinders. What charms me about all these is their identity, their inherent Britishness, and it’s become increasingly more evident that Charlie Brooker’s once ground breaking Black Mirror has fallen into the territory of becoming some pseudo-ironic Twilight Zone rip off, but without any of the grittiness. Twilight Zone meets Friends, as opposed to something that makes you think about any serious social issues.

The drastic change can be traced back to when the show moved from channel 4 to Netflix, in this moving from an institution steeped in British identity and liberalism, to a global still considerably liberal institution it seems as though Black Mirror lost some of the original charm. This isn’t meant as an attack on Netflix, or even an attack on the Americanisation of a fundamentally British show that I once loved, it’s more meant as an observation of something morphing into something that I simply no longer enjoy.

It could be argued that significant drop in quality of output can be most evident in the more Americanised episodes, there is one clear exception to this rule, the episode San Junipero, which was utterly flawless in my opinion, it is a pastiche of 1980s seaside town USA which is later revealed to all be taking place in a simulation, but like I say this isn’t an attack on the American identity of some of the stories. The simplifying of the episode’s themes, along with the re-hashing of previous themes in the most recent series has left an extremely bitter taste in my mouth, I will now go on to analyse each episode a little further.

Striking Vipers (episode 1), which centres around a semi-homophobic take on black male culture, in the guise of an adulterous relationship forming through a VR video game plays out as a slapstick comedy, only it’s not remotely funny, and there’s no overarching theme to it, it’s boring and the episode ends with some assumed polyamorous means of achieving a happy relationship, the episode is simply an exercise in “this is a technology that might exist in the near future, here’s a badly written, and dull, somewhat offensive story we’ve made in regards to it”. This is a very similar storyline to another post-Netflix change episode “Playtest” which bases the story around a character, and virtual reality video games, and the underlying guilt this character feels, resulting in a pretty harrowing mental breakdown, a similar theme, handled far better, and in my opinion a far better episode, and yet the episode is still not as good as the selection of episodes I would deem “classic black mirror” (I will list my 5 favourite episodes at the end of this essay). 

1.5/5

The premise of Smithereens (episode 2), and the inclusion of the “sexy priest” from BBCs Fleabag left me quietly optimistic for a more British identity centred storyline, however I was again bitterly disappointed, the story started off well, an entertaining kidnapping sequence, a good level of black mirror dark humour, but potentially the most underwhelming twist imaginable, it plays on the black mirror sensibility of individual guilt, and the characters acting out because of this, but to what end? What outcome is/was there? The characters aren’t particularly likeable, or relatable, and the reasoning is possibly the most eye roll inducing thing imaginable. As you can see from how I’m describing this it left me incredibly frustrated, perhaps due to the casting, and the media build up, on talk shows etc, I had higher hopes for this one episode in particular which may well be why I’ve hit the ground with the heaviest bump, finding it the most underwhelming episode of this series.

1/5

The third, and thankfully final episode Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, comes across literally as though the production team signed Miley Cyrus on board, and at the last minute decided to make a story about it, the increasing ideas surrounding the singularity (the uploading of the human consciousness to a machine) are very common themes in Black Mirror, best shown in two particular episodes, firstly the Christmas special “White Christmas” in which John Hahm plays a character who is well versed in the ability to copy consciousness, and torture the human consciousness as a means of achieving information, this throughout the short film is placed around a very interesting storyline, about infidelity, and it evokes the questions surrounding A.I. rights etc, in a manner that’s been well tackled in classic Sci-Fi films like Blade Runner and Moon, amongst many others. In classic Black Mirror style it leaves the viewer squirming, and that to me this is what makes early black mirror stand apart from the more recent series generally. The other better, and arguably greatest episode of Black Mirror is Be Right Back, the infamous “robot episode” where a character passes away, and his partner offers up his online persona to a company who then upload this into a realistic android-esque replacement, the story also explores themes of guilt, lost love, grief, and all within this near future tech thematic. When these two episodes are considered alongside the episode Rachel, Jack Ashley Too they play out as though they are two utterly different shows, from different minds, the episode tackles these themes, of autonomous human rights, in relation to the singularity, and yet they play out as some teen comedy, with a poor level of Friends-esque slapstick comedy chucked in, and the worst part about all this is that of the three it’s probably the best episode, but it’s still utterly shit.

2.5/5

It feels increasingly like the post-Netflix Black Mirror has fallen into a habit of overloading series with filler episodes, asking the viewer to remove those that they don’t deem to be worthy of the classic Black Mirror, and that’s been fine until now, I had sincerely hoped that with release of only a three episode series the quality would have overall greatly improved, but these three episodes, to be frank, aren’t really even worth considering at all, I wouldn’t even say they’re really worth watching

Classic Black Mirror list

1. Be Right Back– Series 2, Episode 1

2. The Entire History of You– Series 1, Episode 3

3. San Junipero – Series 3, Episode 4

4. White Christmas – Series 2, Episode 4

5. Hang the Dj– Series 4, Episode 4 / The National Anthem– Series 1, Episode 1

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