The second story in particular ranks among the most conceptually flimsy in the series.īrooklyn director John Crowley gets behind the camera here for an alternate-history setup focusing on the emotional over the conceptual, though his pedigree would suggest a higher level of nuance than this love triangle with dull points. There’s a self-reflexive statement on the voyeuristic sadism to Black Mirror’s darker hours in here somewhere, but it only begins to rear its head in the final third after the first two fail to cohere into anything of substance. Each one involves the vicarious sharing of experience or sensation: A doctor taps into his patients’ pain before he starts using them for twisted pleasure a man agrees to share his mind with his vegetative wife’s consciousness, who turns out to be one annoying mental roomie and one unusual exhibit invites visitors to electrocute the hologram of a wrongfully convicted black man for sick kicks. It’s a head-scratcher, less in the usual “Let us ponder these thought experiments” sense and more in the “Why bother?” sense.Ī young woman ( Letitia Wright) pops into an abandoned roadside attraction that collects memorabilia from techno-crimes, and hangs around for three disturbing yarns from the intense, unsettling proprietor (Douglas Hodge).

The revelation of her actual condition comes out of nowhere, feels decidedly un– Black Mirror, does nothing to enrich the ideas put forth about predatory media, and stumbles through the steps of the traditional horror mold into which it sorts itself. Like a grim projection of that celeb baby’s future, teen starlet Mazey Day (Clara Rugaard) approaches a Lohanian breakdown accelerated by the shutterbugs (chief among them one played by Zazie Beetz, who is conflicted about her dirty work) hounding her all the way to the remote rehab facility where it would appear she’s going to dry out. No one’s really pro-paparazzi (except, I would imagine, the paparazzi), a broad consensus that has a way of making screeds against them come off as obvious or redundant - though that’s hardly the gravest issue facing this steadily worsening take on celebrity tabloid culture, bluntly announced in the opening moments with a radio broadcast about the birth of Suri Cruise. Read on for Vulture’s definitive ranking of all 28 episodes of Black Mirror, from worst to best. It delivers far more hits than misses, but hashing out which episode hits hardest can be helpful for a newbie who wants to customize their viewing order. Such a varied palette of styles and stories means that the series is naturally hit or miss. Political satires and future dystopias, cop procedurals and war dramas, soulless nihilism and life-affirming humanism: If you dislike Black Mirror, perhaps you just haven’t found the right episode. A newfangled, potentially disastrous technology pops up in each installment, giving the series a healthy sense of cohesion, but the six seasons aired so far couldn’t be more all over the map. Yet no program has taken advantage of the elasticity of anthology storytelling quite like Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, trading pet themes, genres, creative personnel, and tones from one episode to the next. Īnthologies are all the rage these days, from Ryan Murphy’s ever-expanding empire of miniseries to Joe Swanberg’s collection of romance shorts. It has been updated to include episodes from Black Mirror ’s sixth season.

Most twisted black mirror episodes