Element of surprise suffers in season 4 of anthology series
There’s a perverse sort of symmetry at work with the latest season of “Black Mirror.”
Named after the visual reflection of mobile devices when powered off, the series began in 2011 as an import from the United Kingdom, memorably kicking off with a bizarrely prescient episode about a prime minister’s close relationship with a pig (Google it).
Since then, it has resembled a sort of “Twilight Zone” for the digital age, imagining not-too-distant futures of Yelp-like ratings for people, a dystopian endgame for “American Idol” and how digital footprints could yield a haunting sort of immortality.
Netflix acquired the series in 2015, and the six-episode fourth season — released on Friday — marks the second from the streaming service.
Of course, for all its cautionary examples of technology run amok, the series earned its greatest notice for “San Junipero,” a timeless, digitally enhanced love story that constituted its most-hopeful moment and earned two Emmys out of three nominations last year.
Creator and executive producer Charlie Brooker has acknowledged that the grim sociopolitical climate in which he was writing in 2016 led him toward similar such flickers of hope in this season.
Whether that will be enough to keep people watching, though, is uncertain — and the show’s often-nihilistic worldview isn’t the biggest issue.
With rotating casts and directors, anthology series are uneven by nature, and the latest episodes of “Black Mirror” feel even more so, as the show occasionally struggles to capture the sense of surprise that was long its greatest strength.
“Arkangel” – the cinematic series opener, which was directed by Jodie Foster — imagines a sophisticated surveillance device that seizes upon the fears of a helicopter parent (Rosemarie DeWitt). In a familiar flourish, the episode’s technology is less of a threat than the behavior it enables and amplifies, and the deterioration of the relationship between mother and daughter (Brenna Harding) feels all but inevitable, thus diminishing its effect.
Similarly atmospheric with its frozen Icelandic setting, “Crocodile” might be the season’s least-satisfying offering for its downward predictability.
The episode, directed by John Hillcoat, hinges on a woman with a dark secret (Andrea Riseborough) and the lengths to which she will go to protect it.
The technology of the episode becomes almost secondary as an average person’s descent to cruelty strains disbelief more than what ultimately implicates her.
In a telling indication that Brooker’s instincts to lighten up this season were correct, the most enjoyable episodes are his least-weighty.
The “Star Trek”spoofing “U.S.S. Callister,” for example, features Jesse Plemons, Michaela Coel, Cristin Milioti and Jimmi Simpson, all of whom relish mocking some of that series’ vintage tropes.
Brooker closes with “Black Museum,” a sort of anthology episode in its own right featuring a Brooker-esque curator (Douglas Hodge) of a roadside attraction leading a guest (Letitia Wright) through his collection of artifacts of technologically assisted torment and trauma.
“Fun story, huh?” he asks, sneering like a carnival barker.
The episode is easily the season’s darkest, most-grotesque ride.