Black Mirror: The Ideas That Follow You Home

More than “phones are bad”

The easy description of Black Mirror is that technology makes everything worse. That misses a lot of what is interesting about it.

People already want approval. They already revisit arguments, envy other people's lives and wish they could undo a loss. Give them a new way to pursue those feelings and the device does not need to be malicious. It only needs to work.

That is where the better stories find their hold on me. The invention might be unfamiliar, but the motive is not. I can understand why someone would want the thing on offer before I start worrying about what they will do with it. A warning about a gadget would be much less interesting than that.

The freedom to begin again

Most episodes give you a new cast, a new situation and a new set of possibilities. That freedom is a huge part of the appeal. The show can spend an hour in a strange little world without having to turn it into five seasons of mythology.

It also means a less successful episode does not have to spoil the next one. Another story can start with a completely different tone. There is no permanent group of characters whose increasingly unlikely adventures the writers must keep extending.

The format is not now entirely standalone: the USS Callister story has a sequel in season seven. Watch the original first. But the broader pleasure remains that of opening another story and discovering what sort of trouble it has in mind.

I like that willingness to take a risk. Black Mirror can be funny, unpleasant, tender or frightening, sometimes in combinations that should not work as well as they do.

A rating is never just a rating

“Nosedive” is a good example of how quickly the show can make its point without explaining it to death. Social approval has become a score attached to every interaction, and suddenly being pleasant is a form of work.

Bryce Dallas Howard is excellent as Lacie. The smile matters: maintaining it, checking whether it has landed, trying a little too hard. The performance makes the social pressure funny before it becomes exhausting.

“The Entire History of You” starts from another easy-to-understand temptation: being able to replay your memories. It does not require much imagination to see the attraction. It takes better writing to make you sit with the potential cost to trust.

These are ideas I enjoy because they survive beyond the immediate plot. You can disagree about how somebody behaves and still recognise the feeling that made the behaviour possible. The best episodes give you something to argue about afterwards.

Not every nightmare looks the same

The variety matters as much as the cleverness. USS Callister borrows the bright uniforms and reassuring shapes of old-fashioned space adventure. “Nosedive” offers a carefully presentable pastel world. “San Junipero” has the music and colour of a night out in the 1980s.

Those settings are doing different jobs. The show is not simply applying the same gloomy look to a procession of bad futures. Sometimes the most unsettling place is the one that initially looks rather inviting.

“Metalhead” goes in another direction with its stripped-back, black-and-white pursuit. That change of pace is part of the anthology's strength. I would not want every episode to be a variation on one favourite approach, however effective that approach might be.

There is room for emotional warmth too. The reputation for bleakness is understandable, but it can make the series sound narrower than it is.

A whole person in one episode

An anthology needs actors who can establish somebody quickly. There is not always a season of small moments available to make us care. Black Mirror has been very good at finding performances that give an idea a human centre.

Daniel Kaluuya, as Bing in “Fifteen Million Merits”, makes an enclosed, artificial world feel inhabited rather than merely designed. His character's frustration is more persuasive than an explanation of how the system works could be.

Jesse Plemons and Cristin Milioti give USS Callister very different kinds of energy. Plemons can make a pause or an awkward smile deeply uncomfortable; Milioti brings alertness and a sense of somebody actively taking in her surroundings.

Jon Hamm is another particularly good fit for the show. His ease in conversation is useful in material where being put at ease is not necessarily reassuring. These are performances that make you watch the person, not just wait for the concept to reveal its next trick.

Clever is not enough on its own

The episodes I value most do more than demonstrate a thought experiment. They make the feeling behind it convincing. Jealousy, loneliness or grief cannot simply be labels attached to someone so the machinery of a twist can run.

That is why the human side matters so much. A story can be technically ingenious and still leave very little behind. Black Mirror's strongest work gets the two parts together: I am interested in the idea, and I care what it is doing to the people.

The standard inevitably varies. Rebuilding the world so often creates opportunities for surprises and for misses. I do not need to defend every episode to rate the series this highly. Its best work earns that position, and the range gives me plenty of reasons to keep watching.

Nor do I judge it by whether it has accurately predicted the next technology headline. Fiction does not have to become a forecast to be perceptive about us.