Reviewing a season of Black Mirror is like reviewing the British weather. One moment you’re basking in the sun, the next you’re being drenched with rain. When Charlie Brooker’s speculative anthology series, predominantly concerned with our technological future, first aired in 2011, it was hailed as both brilliantly acerbic and powerfully prescient. But as the years have gone on – and as the series has moved from Channel 4 to Netflix, employing ever more American stars – the quality has become more variable. Like the weather.
Four years after the release of series five – which suffered a significant dip in critical reception – Black Mirror is back with a five-episode season. Tackling issues from artificial intelligence to automaton clones, via genres ranging from black comedy to supernatural horror, the new series is inflected with classic Black Mirror tropes but also brings something new. For the first time, Black Mirror is not merely holding the looking glass up to the damage wrought by technology, but to the self-inflicted wounds of society as well. The resultant mishmash demonstrates that the best episodes of Black Mirror will always be dystopian, and experimenting with that winning formula is a fool’s errand.
