When it comes to TV shows I am a very slow watcher. I blame myself of course, stemming mostly from far too strong a fondness for playing video games. Season seven is the latest for haunting tech-nightmare anthology Black Mirror; a show where each episode a different type of near future tech is examined and dragged kicking and screaming to its most horrific possible outcome. A technology based The Twilight Zone if you will. After a fun sixth season (which for the first time veered directly into pure horror in a few of its episodes), season seven brings things back to the tech again, including some amazing episodes among the six that make up this season. It did take me around a year to watch all of this, so my memory will be fuzzy on a chunk of it.
It begins with 'Common People' which is exactly the type of harrowing episode you would expect from the show. Amanda; a school teacher (Rashida Jones - Parks and Recreation) gets afflicted with a terminal and incurable disease, but seemingly fortunate help is at hand. She discovers a medical company who are able to prevent the illness from spreading, though only if their monthly subscription is continued to be paid for. Companies are going to company, and so over the time the subscription cost is increased, while the perks are reduced as more and more expensive packages are launched. Forced to go on lower tiers, the penalty is not only extreme tiredness for Amanda, but her body gets hijacked at random times to force her to act out adverts that have been beamed into her mind. These downsides begin to have a drastic effect on her life, and so, to try and help her, her husband Mike (Chris O'Dowd - The Cloverfield Paradox, The IT Crowd) resorts to increasingly desperate measures to make money. This is prime Black Mirror, feel bad entertainment that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Next up is 'Bête Noire', a strange and fantastical feeling episode. Confectionary expert Maria's (Siena Kelly) life is upended when Verity (Rosy McEwen - The Alienist) joins the company she works at. Maria had previously been in the same school as her, where Verity had been seen as a weird loner, so is immediately uncomfortable with her presence. Everything the new employee does is highly successful, while Maria's career begins to collapse when she is blamed for increasingly wild actions that despite her knowing she hasn't done, all the evidence appears otherwise. It appears the very nature of the world is being re-written, leading to Maria beginning to question her sanity. This was a crazy episode that dealt with an idea that hadn't been explored before in the show, a good thing as some of the previous seasons felt like they had really ran out of any new type of idea. This leads up to one of the more out-there Black Mirror endings.
The third episode, 'Hotel Reverie' takes the form of a love story. This one sees actress Brandy (Issa Rae - Barbie) accepting a film role that involves her being sent into a digitally constructed recreation of a classic black and white film. The idea is that she will replace the role of the protagonist, letting the film work for a modern audience. While in the simulation, the machine malfunctions, trapping her inside the film world. With time passing much more quickly inside it, Brandy finds herself trapped in a static world, where the only other person not frozen in time is the A.I construct of Dorothy (Emma Corrin - Deadpool & Wolverine), a recreated character from the original movie. As the weeks (for them) pass, the two begin to fall in love, leading to heartbreak when the machine is eventually fixed and everything resets, including the construct of Dorothy. This was a unique and more slow paced episode, but not one that left too much of an impression for me.
This slow pace certainly doesn't continue with 'Plaything', that charges along with a lean 45 minute runtime and was one of the best episodes I have yet seen of Black Mirror. In present day, an eccentric former video game reviewer; Cameron Walker (Peter Capaldi - Doctor Who, World War Z) is arrested for shoplifting. While being interviewed at the police station, the man admits to an unsolved murder decades previously in the 1990s. The majority of the episode then heads back in time to show how that murder happened, along the way telling the story of a younger Cameron (Lewis Gribben) who becomes obsessed with a prototype video game he is given, a game where the A.I creatures in it are able to evolve and learn, based on how they are treated. A wonderful episode with a goose-bump inducing ending, and a supreme performance from Capaldi.
The penultimate episode is 'Eulogy' that was another slow one and also the seasons most forgettable. Here, lonely old man Phillip (Paul Giamatti - Morgan) is contacted by a memorial company who have technology that allow people to enter a limited reconstructed world from the image of a photo and the persons forgotten memories of what they were doing when that photo was originally taken. A former lover of his has died, and her daughter had asked for Phillip's recollections to be included in her funeral service. The only problem being that it has been so long that the man frustratingly can't remember even what this former lover of his looked like, and the only photos he can find with her in it have her face obscured from view. In true Black Mirror fashion, things don't go smoothly for Phillip, with his recollections leading to harrowing revelations about the type of person he used to be, though it did finish on a somewhat positive finish.
Last but not least is the very exciting season finale, 'USS Callister: Into Infinity'. This is the first ever direct sequel to a previous episode, and takes place after the events of season four's 'USS Callister'. Spoilers for that one to follow, and if you are not familiar, a recap of that first one is given at the start. Having escaped the bubble VR world where uploaded A.I consciousness's of real people had been trapped by twisted VR creator Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons - Breaking Bad), the crew of the USS Callister now find themselves in the popular sci-fi VR game, 'Infinity'. The trouble being now that while normal players can be killed with no penalty other than being forced out the game, the crew themselves die for real if they are killed. With increasing monetisation of the game world, they are forced to piracy, robbing from players to get money to pay for fuel and basic supplies. It took me the longest time to get around to watching this, the 90 minute episode runtime really putting me off seeing it. This was very exciting that had me getting more and more on the edge of my seat as it played out. It was fantastic to see Plemons reprise his role, and though he had died in the original, a way for him to come back is found, him appearing in flashbacks and in other unique ways. He is such a fantastic actor and he nails his role here. Hardly the most serious of episodes, alongside some needless comedic scenes, there is even the inclusion of a comic relief character, which did seem to be a bridge too far, detracting rather than adding to the story.
Season seven of Black Mirror had some fantastic episodes, making for yet another great season. A good mix of episode types, and some great casting choices. Not all bangers, but mostly it was firing on all cylinders.
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