Mankind meets tech in ‘Black Mirror’
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
There is a major flaw with “Black Mirror,” the trippy sci-fi anthology series that debuted new episodes last week on Netflix.
There are only six episodes.
Fans of the first two seasons, originally produced by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and available on Netflix, already have discovered “Black Mirror” is a showcase for creator Charlie Brooker’s deep-dive views on the relationships between technology and man.
Or woman, as is the case in “Nosedive,” a new episode starring Bryce Dallas Howard. She’s living in a candy-colored, not-too-distance future world where the class system has evolved based on social media rating.
Although Mr. Brooker has written almost every episode of “Black Mirror,” this one is courtesy of Michael Schur (creator of NBC’s excellent “The Good Place”) and Rashida Jones.
Right now, it seems like an absurd premise, yet eerie in its possibility. At one hour long, it’s also a big stretched, but the payoff — “Black Mirror” promises no happy endings but the conclusions are always thought-provoking — is worth it.
Earlier seasons touched on heartache and what might happen if someone you loved could be reproduced through the millions of electronic interactions we all have (Hayley Atwell in “Be Right Back”), and what humanity owes creatures of artificial intelligence (Jon Hamm in “White Christmas”).
Imagine HBO’s “WestWorld” meets the Amazon’s Alexa.
“Black Mirror” also does outright horror. The season two episode “White Bear” dropped a woman into a reality show nightmare. This season, there is “Playdate,” where an American backpacker in London signs up to beta test a mysterious virtual reality video game.
The tension builds after he’s virtually embedded in a haunted mansion. Written by Mr. Brooker and directed by Dan Trachtenberg (“10 Cloverfield Lane”), “Playdate” is especially effective, thanks to the shaggy cheer of its star, Wyatt Russell.
Then there is “San Junipero,” typical of Mr. Brooker’s smart scripts. It asks moral and ethical questions about what we want and deserve in our own vision of heaven.
As “The Outer Limits” once advised “There is nothing wrong with your television set . ... we are controlling transmission.” In the world of “Black Mirror,” “we” are no longer strictly human.