‘There is no cure for the internet…’
As the world edges ever closer to just being one big Black Mirror episode, now seems a prescient time for Charlie Brooker’s anthology series to return. Let’s take a look…
Episode 1: Joan is Awful
Schitt’s Creek‘s Annie Murphy stars as a woman whose life becomes a hit TV show on the fictional Netflix stand in Streamberry. Starting with an uncomfortable encounter at work and ending with her defecating in a church, Joan is Awful pulls no punches in portraying cancel culture and the slide into main character syndrome. In the age of social media, everyone is the star of their TV show – a point that is only semi-successfully made in this opening episode.
While Murphy is great and it’s fun to see Salma Hayek playing a CGI version of herself, Joan is Awful doesn’t stick the landing with the third act feeling strangely unsatisfying. An inauspicious start.
Episode 2: Loch Henry
Wow. This is more like it. Davis McCardle (Samuel Blenkin) and his girlfriend Pia (Myha’la Herrold) travel to a sleepy Scottish town to make a very dull-sounding documentary about conservation. Upon arrival, they pivot to something else entirely.
Black Mirror has always skewed darker across its six seasons but this is probably the most obsidian moment in the show’s entire run. It’s best to go into this one knowing as little as possible but I will say that the jaw-dropping third act genuinely frightened me. Blenkin and Herrold make for an unconvincing central couple but the supporting cast made up of Daniel Portman, John Hannah and Monica Dolan are all excellent with Portman particularly excelling as gregarious barman Stuart King.
Drawing on everything from The Poughkeepsie Tapes, The Wicker Man and The Blair Witch Project, Loch Henry is destined to go down as a classic episode of Black Mirror. A masterpiece of prestige television.
Episode 3: Beyond the Sea
One of the consequences of Black Mirror moving from Channel 4 to Netflix is that they’ve been able to attract more A-list stars. Beyond the Sea sees Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett as a pair of astronauts who are able to transfer their consciousness into a real-life avatar on Earth which enables them to sleep on their spacecraft and live a full life back home. As this is a Black Mirror episode, things soon take a dark turn.
This is another instance in which I don’t want to give too much away so if you haven’t watched the episode, stop reading and go and do so now. Go on. Do as you’re told.
Beyond the Sea is a feature-length film in everything but name. Clocking in at 80 minutes and featuring an all-star cast that sees Paul and Harnett joined by Kate Mara, Auden Thornton and Rory Culkin, this will surely join Loch Henry as an episode that is considered an instant classic. The two leads are genuinely fantastic, and Brooker’s character development and use of dialogue is probably at its most accomplished here. Paul does much of the heavy lifting, being tasked to play his own character and that of Hartnett’s in a premise that evokes Face/Off of all things, but Hartnett also does some great work in the face of the brutal murder of his entire family in a scene eerily reminiscent of the Manson murders (which took place in 1969 – the same year this episode is set).
This third episode in the season serves as a stark reminder that when Black Mirror is good, it’s still the best show on television.
Episode 4: Mazey Day
In March 2008, not even a year after Britney Spears’ ‘breakdown’, South Park aired one of their most powerful episodes Britney’s New Look. The episode ends with Spears missing half a head and still being chased and hounded by the paparazzi until she is eventually sacrificed by a baying mob in order to secure a more favourable corn harvest. It is a shocking and prescient scene that will go down as one of the long-running animated series’ best-ever episodes. The problem with Mazey Day is that it tries to make the same point but 15 years too late.
Bo (Zazie Geetz) is an unscrupulous paparazzi photographer in the mid-2000s. The eponymous Mazey Day (Clara Rugaard) is a troubled actress who goes into hiding after a hit-and-run incident. Following the whiff of a huge payday, Bo tries to track Mazey down along with fellow ‘parasite’ Hector (Danny Ramirez). And when they find her, it turns out she’s a werewolf. An unearned and underwhelming twist. Fans of the werewolf subgenre will enjoy the third act, I imagine, but even as a horror aficionado, the grisly conclusion did very little for me.
Mazey Day is one of the shortest episodes of Black Mirror and also one of the most forgettable. Geetz is great throughout, however, it must be said, and there are still interesting moments here and there, particularly in the first act.
Episode 5: Demon 79
While the rest of the world is deeply embedded in ’80s nostalgia after the runaway success of Stranger Things and its Spielbergian aesthetic, Demon 79 harks back to the early slasher films of the ’70s. This final episode of the season could be a sequel to Black Christmas or Halloween if it were set in the north of England.
Nida Huq (Anjana Vasan) lives a nondescript life as a sales assistant in a shoe shop. She lives alone following the death of her mother, is either ignored or bullied by her co-workers and victimised by the National Front. Upon the discovery of a strange wooden object, she inadvertently summons a demon named Gaap (Paapa Essiedu) who informs her that she must sacrifice three people to the dark lord or the world will end. While I would have preferred Demon 79 to remain in the world of the living, Essiedu is great as the mostly nonplussed demon and it certainly adds a unique element to what is so often a derivative sub-genre.
I mostly enjoyed Demon 79 and it does a great job of capturing the ’70s slasher aesthetic but just as Mazey Day cribs from South Park, this episode veers uncomfortably close to the plot of the Stephen King novel (and David Cronenberg film) The Dead Zone. That similarity aside, Demon 79 is a singular and compelling Black Mirror episode that closes out what has been an incredibly strong season.