6 years after a poorly-received fifth season, Black Mirror returns.
★★★★✰
Charlie Brooker’s anthology series has been popular since its inception, delivering think-pieces in the form of movie-long episodes and using technology as a lens to discuss human identity, rights, and the state of the world. This commentary kept fans coming back for more, until a disastrous fifth season – where we witnessed a Hannah Montana parody and VR extramarital sexscapades – made fans wonder whether Black Mirror had lost its spark.
I can’t say for certain whether season six gives us this spark back, but it certainly does a good job of reinventing Black Mirror’s essence. Each episode introduces themes and ideas of a wider variety than before – hopefully due to Brooker’s break from the show – though not always to their full potential. The season is strongest at its rise and fall, the first episode and final being the most enjoyable and refreshing.
We begin the season with ‘Joan is Awful’, which follows an average woman with an average dissatisfaction for her life.Soured by the discovery that a very popular streaming service has a show that copies her life to the last detail, as more people watch her mishaps, everyone starts to find her awful. It was an interesting ride – some suspension of disbelief necessary – but by the end I really enjoyed the story. It looks at the ways companies mine people for profit, (the issue of AI art on my mind throughout the episode)and expands it to become dystopian. With the uncomfortable ideas it brings up, I found the ending a bit too perfect.
For a not-so-perfect ending, ‘Demon 79’: a brown girl living in North England in the 1970s awakens a demon trapped in a talisman, and now has to kill three people in three days to prevent the apocalypse. Diverging from the usual focus on technology, it did feel like a true abandoning of Black Mirror’s essence, with its fantastical elements. While I loved it, it might be a tough sell for fans who are here for Brooker’s critiques of technology. The unlikely bond that develops between the demon and our protagonist is the impetus of the episode, as the two team up to undertake a killing spree and explore feelings of exclusion amid a xenophobic political climate of rising right-wing sympathy.
Which does lead me to the casting of this season. Not only were the actors for the protagonists great choices, there were some enjoyable cameos, however short. Ayo Edebiri? Ben Barnes? Michael Cera? And this is all in the first episode. Props to the casting directors, truly.
I wouldn’t say the season suffers from a weak middle, but the other three episodes are not as strong, as the divergence from Black Mirror’s essence is not as well executed.
‘Loch Henry’ explores the incessant, toxic nature of the true crime genre, as two film students who seek to make a documentary about a small-town murder find out they are closer to the murderer than they realised. While the writing captures the insular and depressing feeling of one’s hometown accurately, the plot twist cheapens the message and ends the episode on a flat note. I would have enjoyed more discussion around the fetishisation of murderers and their victims by fans, of which we only see a glimpse of at the end.
‘Mazey Day’ takes us to the early 2000s, with a focus on the paparazzi culture. It follows Bo, a photographer struggling to make rent as she sells pictures of celebrities’ private lives. When actress Mazey Day makes headlines for alleged drug abuse, Bo seeks her out to claim the high cash prizes for her photo, but uncovers a much darker truth. The episode did have a good build up to an interesting plot twist. A clever ending also contrasted the shooting of a gun with the shooting of a camera, inviting us to compare their inherent violence.
While both of these explore the titular Black Mirror as the reflection of the camera lens, ‘Beyond the Sea’ takes us to outer space through the black reflection of an astronaut’s helmet. A pair of astronauts in a years-long space mission are able to live normal lives on Earth through their artificial clones (very common in Black Mirror’s roster), until one is killed and confined to a life in space. I found this one particularly weak, and groaned at the plot twist, although the concept could make for a great horror story.
The verdict:
The season gets a four star review, as an overall enjoyable experience with worthwhile ideas that are sometimes messed up in execution. These episodes reinvent Black Mirror’s essence, breaking from the confines of the technological to introduce supernatural and fantastical elements. With this strong entry to its catalogue, I can’t wait to see how Black Mirror will continue redefining itself in the future.
Words by Catarina Vincente
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