‘Black Mirror 6’ spoofs Netflix but seems stuck in its past

WARNING: This review contains A LOT of spoilers for Season 6 of the show. Black mirrornow available on Netflix.

Joan is terriblefirst episode of the new season Black mirrorscience fiction anthology satire To Charlie Brooker plays Annie Murphy as the title character, a tech company employee who discovers her life has been turned into a drama series without her permission, available on a streaming platform called Streamberry.

Joan is terrible this is a notable episode for a variety of reasons. First, this is the best – or at least the best – of the various chapters of this new season. Secondly, a lot of time has passed since the release of the episode Black mirror thought as one comedy it didn’t really work as one comedythanks to its original idea – Streamberry uses a supercomputer capable of instantly adapting the events of Joan’s life into a series using deepfakes Salma Hayek and Himesh Patel both at Murphy and Hayek’s performances. Thirdly, the plate he’s eating really looks like you want to spit, given that Streamberry is clearly modeled from the logo typeface to the one he heard at the beginning of the TV series “TOO-DUM” – on Netflix.

Perhaps most importantly, this is the only one of the five new episodes that plays on the show’s core theme or our addiction to new (or inevitable) technology. Second series, scary loch henry, the only one among others, which takes place in the present, in a remote corner of Scotland, where you are cut off from everything. The other three chapters take place in an era before the advent of smartphones, even if the backstory Overseas is an alternate 1969 version in which a pair of fellow astronauts, played by Josh Hartnett and Aaron Paul, spend their time on a long space journey uploading their consciences into artificial duplicates left at home with their families.

ointment day, starring Zazie Beetz as a paparazzi who tries to make a breakthrough thanks to pictures of a troubled movie star set in 2006 while Demon 79 in the late 70s. The technological element is present in all series, but it is, so to speak, vintage: it has VHS. loch henrydigital video cameras in Mazey day and TVs in Demon 79. And in the final loch henryAspiring director Davis (Samuel Blenkin) becomes famous when his story becomes a Streamberry miniseries that resembles one of many games. true crime Netflix that we watched at the beginning of the pandemic.

All episodes are interesting for different reasons. Joan is terrible seems to be the only successful one. But in general, the question arises whether Charlie Brooker is tired of the series and / or collaboration with Netflix. We lean towards the second hypothesis: Netflix has become such an important part of our “digital lives” that it would seem dishonest if Brooker didn’t come to terms with this reality at some point. And jokes directly aimed at Netflix in Joan is terrible AND loch henry — including the dangers of not reading the terms of any platform, or how uninterested we are in the products offered to us on streaming services — can actually apply to any technology company. But “moving” Black mirror in 2016, from English Channel 4 to Netflix, something else provoked. This gave Brooker access to much bigger stars and much bigger budgets. But the last few seasons seem to be a lot more erratic, in part because they’re no longer the three-episode series made for Channel 4.

The Netflix years have been even more repetitive, united by all too similar plots, above all one: the dangers faced by a man whose conscience is duplicated in device or in virtual reality. However, this main theme gave us two of the best episodes of the entire series: San Junipero (featuring Gugu Mbatha-Row and Mackenzie Davis falling in love in a digital version of the afterlife) and USS Callister (starring Christine Milioti trapped in a style fantasy Star Trek technology entrepreneur). But the more Brooker rephrased the idea, the less impressed viewers were with it.

So maybe this last season is just Brooker’s attempt to move away from what he did (and did again) in the past. If this is indeed the case, then it is remarkable that the author did not just rest on his laurels, but instead tried to find out that Black mirror you can also imagine. But many of these new episodes expose the same issues the series has faced in its recent history, even if it focuses primarily on the role of social media in our lives.

(Spoilers ahead. If you’re going to watch the show and don’t want to know anything, check back here later.)

In particular, the pacing and length of the episodes remain two obvious issues. Most of the episodes produced by Channel 4 were between 40 and 50 minutes long, enough time to set the rules for each individual world and then set twist on the reality we already thought we knew. On Netflix, the average length has become 60 minutes, often even longer, so much so that to find an episode of only 41 minutes, as Metalworkers (the one in white and black with ferocious robot dogs) was simply stunning. Some of these sequences took advantage of the opportunity for deeper development of ideas and characters, but many others seemed to repeat or stretch out the basic assumption too much, just to make sure it came through loud and clear to the viewer.

Overseas AND Demon 79 both last over an hour. Paapa Essiedu is very interesting in the role of a titled demon, and Anjana Vasan (from the English series We are parts of a lady) is very good in the role of a poor saleswoman who must kill three people in three days to stop the end of the world. In part, they manage to make us forget about the excessive length of the episode. Overseas, on the other hand, it takes a long time before the actual plot kicks in, i.e. when a group of Manson Family-style hippies murder Hartnett’s family and destroy his surrogate robot; and then works through the ensuing complications, especially when Aaron Paul suggests Hartnett use Paul’s fake body and spend time with his wife (played by Kate Mara) as a “break” from the pain, monotony, and cosmic isolation. Paul, Hartnett, and Mara are all very good, but every scene seems to stretch out too much, and at the end, the viewer finds themselves locked in a cage inside a very long space mission.

Ironically, the series’ shortest episode is the one that could have had extra time. With my 40 minutes Mazey day it talks about the repressive nature of paparazzi culture and how it turns us all into animals. But the overly literal idea – we learn that Maisie (Clara Rugaard) is not in rehab but hiding from the full moon because she has become a werewolf in the meantime – is so absurd that it’s more fun. (though unintentionally) than anything we see in Joan is terrible or Demon 79.

Joan is terrible AND loch henry they make the most efficient use of playing time (both are just under an hour long). Joan’s discovery that her life has become a series, and her subsequent attempt to erase it all, requires gradual building, with new irony in the face of each new complication. Example: Joan realizes that she must do something so humiliating, and then Salma Hayek destroys her charms by spreading diarrhea down the church aisle during the wedding. When Joan and Salma discover that they are two versions of the same character and that there are an infinite number of digital Joan, Murphy, Hayek and, in a cameo, Michael Cera, they are all so good that we forget that Brooker is doing his usual little game about simulators and virtual reality. And just like San Juniperoit’s nice that this episode has a happy ending, which is quite unique in the universe Black mirror.

Subject loch henry it is a slowly growing mystery. The main characters are Davis, his girlfriend Pia (Michala Herrold) and his old friend Stuart (Daniel Portman); together they make a documentary about a serial killer who killed his victims in the city of Davis and Stewart in the 1990s. The atmosphere is frightening and the plot sets up the plot very well (Davis’ parents were the killer’s accomplices). The ending is perhaps a little rushed, but it also seems to be more focused than the obviously more goofy one in Joan is terrible.

Unlike Joan, Brooker hasn’t gotten rid of the real Streamberry equivalent yet. This year, he signed another title for Netflix, namely a hilarious mockumentary starring fake reporter Philomena Kank. The question, anyway, is how much he wants to continue Black mirror, and how much this formula will still have something to say. Even when he finally decides to cut back on iPhone stories. At least we hope so.

From Rolling Stone USA