Times are bleak. It’s
wet. It’s cold. There’s nothing to look forward to. We have to go back to work. We have to leave Europe. Trump.
Why, then, would Netflix
choose this time of year to unleash a fourth season of Black Mirror on us? I, for one, am feeling particularly
vulnerable, following a family Christmas where my thirty-two-year-old self
reverted to a moody teenager under my retired parents’ roof. Have I gained no maturity in the fourteen
years since I left home?! No. No, I haven’t. But maybe rock bottom is a great place from
which to stare into bleak oblivion. And
that is precisely what Charlie
Brooker’s suite of near-future dystopias offers us: a reason to be
hopeless.
Brooker himself is a terrifying character. His rants on the wonderful Screenwipe and Newswipe carefully detail each
side of various political and social arguments before proving that both sides
are stupid (a bit like a South
Park episode). His Guardian features make sparkling
reading. I rode out a notice period at
my first (awful) job simply reading through the entire back catalogue of his Screen Burn
column, cleverly minimised to a tiny square on my screen so the fusty old
partners had no idea what I was only pretending to work. As a child that was probably too young, I
even cherished his TVGoHome
book (based on the popular website from
before I had internet) which was a parody of a TV guide – the comedy literally
wrote itself. Then he did Dead Set, bringing together two
of my favourite things: reality TV and zombies.
Before I descend into sycophancy, let’s just say I subscribe to
Brookerology.
But it is indeed a dark, dark mind that brings us Black
Mirror. The first point to commend is
that each episode stands alone. It’s
that uncomfortable experience that comes with starting a new boxset: who on
earth is that? What the fudge is going
on? Am I going to enjoy it? Well, get used to it, because that is every
episode of Black Mirror. And while your
brain is working this all out, there’s also a new interpretation of our
soon-to-be future to get to grips with.
To generalise brutally, most episodes take a small life-changing
technological invention and show how it revolutionises our behaviour. This could be an implant that records all
your memories for future reference, such as in The Entire History Of You, or
the robot guard dogs of Metalhead. A lot of this stuff tends to revolve around
applying some sort of device to your temple.
So far, so sci-fi (but not geeky, everybody). But yes, we were commending each episode
standing alone, weren’t we? Whereas your
average boxset just needs to set everything up just the once, Black Mirror has
to reel you in and hold you with something new over and over. And it manages to do this very
skilfully. You can feel immersed in a
brave new society within just a couple of minutes.
The downside is that this, combined with the stark
imaginings of our future, makes for relentless viewing. Therefore, this is not a series you can binge
on like so many Quality
Streets. Try and ration them out,
maybe one a week. Don’t do it on Sunday
nights, though, or you won’t want to return to your mind-numbing job on
Monday. Pick a time when you feel quite
resilient.
This is because things go wrong. Whatever the episode’s premise, whatever the
technological tweak to reality, things will go wrong. And then they will go wronger and wronger and
you will wonder what possessed you to subject yourself to such entertainment. You could have been watching old Friends, but no, you wanted to chime in with the
office Netflix discussion.
If there were a gun to my head making me criticise the show,
then it would be that this awry-going has become slightly formulaic. You could almost break an instalment down
into 10% set up new world, 20% things go a bit wrong, 60% things go very wrong
and then 10% bloody hell. But it’s a
formula that works. As with every
advancement in our standard of living, there are always consequences we never
dreamed of. I swear my thumb bone is now
as brittle as chalk due to iPhone overuse.
I don’t want to use an Alexa as I can’t imagine sitting there in front
of housemates and asking it how to cure a runny tummy.
Finally, the show’s progression is curiously from a British
thing, into an American thing. From a Channel 4 property in series one and two,
Netflix swiped the rights for what has become the third and fourth series. As with our beloved The Office, we feel this is a
marker of something being good: “Oooh they’ve made an American version; this
must be quality.” This isn’t always
accurate, but it works here. In
addition, times may be bleak here, but they’re also bleak in America, so it
makes perfect sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment