Whoever at Netflix made the decision to start taking over and producing shows of its own deserves the chunkiest of bonuses. The past ten years has seen the company transform from a US-based mail-delivery DVD rental service to the world's second largest online streaming website. It is now among the 30 most popular sites in the world! Gone are the days of trailing around its endless digital corridors, desperately searching for an original TV series that isn't Breaking Bad or an ageing British sitcom. I am in no way implying that Fawlty Towers or The Thick of It aren't little pieces of comedy gold but you could hardly call them ground-breaking content.
Recently, we've witnessed an explosion in the number of new series and films featured on and produced by Netflix. You can now watch originals covering a vast range of stories, places and characters, from the adventures of Marco Polo in the court of Kublai Khan to Snoop Dogg coaching a children's American football team. As well as creating new shows, the company has absorbed existing ones like Arrested Development and Trailer Park Boys. Of these, Channel 4's Black Mirror, a masterstroke of gritty British drama fused with mind-boggling science fiction, is by far their greatest acquisition yet...
Rather than developing any overarching storyline, the show is in fact an anthology of short films all loosely based around the concept of technological 'progress'. Each episode features a plausible prospective technological development and a set of unwitting characters who inevitably let it ruin their lives. Whether it's a microchip which allows you to replay any moment in your life or an army of metal bees to pollinate the country, Black Mirror offers an Argos catalogue of handy gadgets to assist the citizen of tomorrow in daily life. What could possibly go wrong? I'll let you find out for yourselves…
Judging it as a TV series alone, Black Mirror is masterfully written and acted. Channelled directly from the exquisitely cynical brain of Charlie Brooker, the plot of each episode combines the flashy technologies with the very real facts of life they initially appear to help with. Situations regularly encountered as we slither along this mortal coil, among them parenthood, love and of course death, are distorted by his dystopian lens. So, despite the complexity, and indeed farfetched nature of the concepts addressed in the programme, every story feels real and relatable.
Brooker’s screenplays tend to be unsettling in tone and bleak in resolution but they are insatiably engaging; plotlines take various twists and turns leaving you startled, confused but ultimately hooked. His stories are brought to life by a raft of very talented, yet rarely star-studded casts, fuelling exasperated conversations of the ‘what else have they been in?’ variety. Perhaps the most outstanding solo performances come from Alex Lawther, Maxine Peake and Lenora Crichlow, all of whom find themselves alone in bone-chilling situations involving guilt, blackmail and the occasional robotic killer-canine. Do they deserve it? Again it’s up to you to decide...
To the large contingent of sci-fi sceptics, often put off by storylines too far detached from reality, don't be deterred by a few futuristic gizmos! The purpose of the series is not to show off any CGI masterpiece or thinly padded intergalactic love story; it uses extreme scenarios to reflect the twisted reality of everyday life... of us. Simultaneously, it manages to explore the darkest, innermost complexities of the human mind while addressing the most overarching social and political issues of today.
Episodes like Men Against Fire, The Waldo Moment and White Bear are more traditionally ‘political’, pointing fingers at the authorities who use powerful discourses to mislead their own people whilst homogenising and vilifying society's outsiders. The strongest episodes however, are those which delve into social commentary. Season one’s Fifteen Million Merits, for example, uses the metaphor of a slave-like existence (on exercise bikes that generate power) to represent the grind of daily life and, in turn, critique the fame-obsession and escapism which fuels our ‘talent’ show, celebrity culture. Hated in The Nation, meanwhile, critiques social media as a platform for detached, unchallenged hate in a society where death threats have become commonplace for those under the cruel public spotlight. However far from reality the scenarios appear to be, they were all inspired by, and consequently reflect, the world around us, albeit through Brooker's fatalistic lens.
Black Mirror makes it as easy as possible to put yourself in the shoes of characters grappling with huge moral dilemmas, emphasising the profundity of the questions the show seeks to raise. Will technological advances bring about an end to inequalities, or simply perpetuate them? Are computers our ultimate ally or a potentially deadly adversary? Is the power granted by technology used by corrupt elites to control and manipulate us or are we all, as a species, inherently corrupted? I think you know where to go to find out...
Recently, we've witnessed an explosion in the number of new series and films featured on and produced by Netflix. You can now watch originals covering a vast range of stories, places and characters, from the adventures of Marco Polo in the court of Kublai Khan to Snoop Dogg coaching a children's American football team. As well as creating new shows, the company has absorbed existing ones like Arrested Development and Trailer Park Boys. Of these, Channel 4's Black Mirror, a masterstroke of gritty British drama fused with mind-boggling science fiction, is by far their greatest acquisition yet...
Rather than developing any overarching storyline, the show is in fact an anthology of short films all loosely based around the concept of technological 'progress'. Each episode features a plausible prospective technological development and a set of unwitting characters who inevitably let it ruin their lives. Whether it's a microchip which allows you to replay any moment in your life or an army of metal bees to pollinate the country, Black Mirror offers an Argos catalogue of handy gadgets to assist the citizen of tomorrow in daily life. What could possibly go wrong? I'll let you find out for yourselves…
Judging it as a TV series alone, Black Mirror is masterfully written and acted. Channelled directly from the exquisitely cynical brain of Charlie Brooker, the plot of each episode combines the flashy technologies with the very real facts of life they initially appear to help with. Situations regularly encountered as we slither along this mortal coil, among them parenthood, love and of course death, are distorted by his dystopian lens. So, despite the complexity, and indeed farfetched nature of the concepts addressed in the programme, every story feels real and relatable.
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| GOT's Bronn looking a lot better dressed than usual |
To the large contingent of sci-fi sceptics, often put off by storylines too far detached from reality, don't be deterred by a few futuristic gizmos! The purpose of the series is not to show off any CGI masterpiece or thinly padded intergalactic love story; it uses extreme scenarios to reflect the twisted reality of everyday life... of us. Simultaneously, it manages to explore the darkest, innermost complexities of the human mind while addressing the most overarching social and political issues of today.
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| TVs for walls: not bad for a prison cell eh?... |
Black Mirror makes it as easy as possible to put yourself in the shoes of characters grappling with huge moral dilemmas, emphasising the profundity of the questions the show seeks to raise. Will technological advances bring about an end to inequalities, or simply perpetuate them? Are computers our ultimate ally or a potentially deadly adversary? Is the power granted by technology used by corrupt elites to control and manipulate us or are we all, as a species, inherently corrupted? I think you know where to go to find out...
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