In its third season, Black Mirror finds its most shocking twist: Hope
The speculative anthology Black Mirror has always been curious (and anxious) about the intersection of technology and perception, finding inspiration in the many ways the march of electronic progress blinds and binds its participants. As the British import returns to augment our reality for a third time—and first for thematically appropriate Silicon Valley behemoth Netflix—it expresses a renewed interest in the disconnects of the connected world. In these six episodes, characters poke at digital projections, are immersed in elaborate simulations, and answer online sins with IRL consequences. They can see these “layers on top of reality” (in the words of the gaming-centric “Playtest”), but they yearn for tactile feedback as well.
And so does Black Mirror. A series of standalone stories set in various dystopian futures risks alienating its viewers as readily as it terrifies them. It needs to provide reasons to care about the fictional people being used and abused by its fearful concepts, which Black Mirror does by appealing to and subverting the audience’s sympathies. Current events circa 2016 have bestowed an air of prescience upon “The National Anthem” and “The Waldo Moment,” but the show’s truest triumphs are stories like “Be Right Back” or “The Entire History Of You,” where the intimacy makes the emotional toll of advanced tech more acutely felt. (And that’s saying nothing of the queasy ride of “White Bear,” which blends scales small and large before going all funhouse stairs on our affiliation with the protagonist.) The increased episode count of season three allows Black Mirror to show off its full range of tricks, but it’s the episodes that make a play for resonance—“San Junipero,” “Nosedive,” and “Men Against Fire”—that stand out. Not coincidentally, “Nosedive” and “San Junipero” also represent season three’s greatest tonal departures, the latter bringing director Joe Wright and co-writers Michael Schur and Rashida Jones into the fold, while the former reunites series creator Charlie Brooker with “Be Right Back” director Owen Harris.
