Black Mirror

Review by Alex Wilkinson

It’s a cool morning in London the cabinet gathers. In the early hours of the morning the senior figures from the government have assembled to discuss an imminent threat to the country. Just a few hours prior a member of the royal family was kidnapped and the government held to ransom. This is however no normal act of terrorism for the kidnapper only asks one thing, for the Prime Minster to perform lewd acts live on television. Welcome to the strange surreal world of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror.

On the coattails of the science fiction greats, such as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley Charlie Brooker manages to create a series of shorts that tackle Sci-Fi horrors of a digital age. From deranged artists to a society that solely exists to serve reality shows the dystopian societies painted in Black Mirror are perhaps all the more disturbing due to their eerily realistic nature.

Black Mirror is a truly creative Sci-Fi series that introspectively looks at our society, and like any good science fiction writer he takes the concepts to their inevitable and grim endings. Each episode follows a different short story, each of which with their own unique setting and scenario.

The stories always start out setting the scene in a standard, none extraordinary manner where all is not quite as it seems. After just a few moments the audience is slowly introduced to the core plot mechanics and the episodes premise slowly draws into focus.

One of the strongest qualities of the show is the way it manages to tightly weave these science fiction ideas into a world very recognisable to us in the now. The setting is never absurd and feels grounded in every way making the concepts all the more unnerving. Even though Black Mirror held a strong story and invokes much thought, for some reason I was left perplexed as to how much I actually enjoyed the series.

It’s hard to place it but for some reason after watching through this short series of only three roughly hour long episodes I felt the stories had something missing. Black Mirror has glimpses of brilliance littered throughout and is deeply thought-provoking.

Charlie Brooker continues to enthral and entertain with Black Mirror it just does not quite make the leap to go toe-to-toe with the science fiction greats, at least not yet. But no one does ever make their first jump after all. As Black Mirror returns on Monday we wait to see if this new series can continue the compelling stories and cerement Brooker as a science fiction contemporary.