A friend recently confessed that he felt Black Mirror had “gone downhill since the episode with the prime minister and the pig.” That episode, “The National Anthem” – in which a fictional PM must perform obscene acts of porcine gratification live on television – captured the zeitgeist perfectly. It was a late watercooler moment for linear TV, back in the days when Charlie Brooker’s pitch-black tech satire was still on Channel 4. It was also, it should be said, the show’s first ever episode. Has it been in perpetual decline ever since?
On the evidence of this latest season, the answer is yes. Once again, the pot-luck nature of the show has given way to an overabundance of bilge. Too many episodes rely on logic-straining mechanics, too few have the emotional sucker punch of “San Junipero” or “Be Right Back”. The horror too, of episodes like “Shut Up and Dance” or “White Christmas”, has given way to a repetitive fear of digital imprisonment. In short, this latest season of Black Mirror just doesn’t carry the same punch that it used to. The crown of television’s best techno-dystopian series, it feels, has been passed to shows like Silo, Squid Game, and, above all, Severance.
