Charlie Brooker, the writer of E4’s Dead Set, returns with a suspenseful, satirical three-part mini-series that taps into collective unease about our modern world.
Finished Black Mirror over the weekend and while I’m impressed that they would tell some of the stories, I felt underwhelmed by the series on the whole. This is a set of pretty morality tales with some pretty heavy handed conclusions like “what if everyone wasn’t watching tv” or “this is the future of crime and punishment”. The ‘punishment‘ episode by far was the most stomach turning and offensive of them all, as I find it difficult to believe that our society would devolve to one that would permit such a thing on such a grand scale. There’s only a total of 6 episodes of the series though, so I didn’t end up feeling like my time was wasted by any means and I’m happy I found it on the Netflix.
Put down the space operas and learn to appreciate allegory, mate. You prolly thought Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was a straightforward tale of the living undead, too. Lrn 2 metaphor. Black Mirror was never meant to be taken as a literal and precise vision of the future. To criticize it as such is missing the point. Widely.
that’s my point though, it was enjoyable, but too ‘on the nose’, like they were holding your face down in the moral message and rubbing it all around screaming LOOK, IF ONLY YOU DIDN’T WATCH TV, HE WOULDN’T HAVE FUCKED THAT PIG. it was just too heavy handed to keep it’s own momentum
I’m a big Brooker fan and I’ve loved his work right from the start, going waaay back to his mid to late nineties internet stuff. Watching him develop has been fascinating and I’m basically in agreement with the good Father. Black Mirror is very broad satire. Some of the episodes hit the mark, others don’t, but they’re all worth taking a look at. Your assessment of tiki’s assessment is a bit harsh though Father. He did say he was happy he’d seen it.