Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams

Each episode of Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams adapts a different short story, with a new cast and a new speculative problem. You do not need to carry a season-long mythology from one instalment to the next.

The useful common thread is uncertainty about something normally taken for granted: identity, memory, work or the world outside an ordinary routine. Some episodes are intimate and melancholy; others use a larger science-fiction setting. The variation is part of the pleasure, even when the quality is uneven.

The guest casts give several of the smaller stories real presence. A familiar actor confronting one impossible detail can be more effective than an explanation of an entire imagined society. The shorter commitment also makes it easy to try a different episode if one approach does not appeal.

It is a good, solid anthology for viewers who like Black Mirror. The Man in the High Castle offers another adaptation of Dick's work, but this collection is the easier choice when you want one self-contained idea for an evening.