The technological future is grimmer than ever in the highly anticipated fourth season of ‘Black Mirror’.
Leaving the warmth and fuzz of ‘San Junipero’ firmly in the dust outside the ‘Black Museum’, Charlie Brooker’s latest continues in his theme of the perils of technology in six solid new episodes.
Ladling a heady mix of killer robot dogs, creepy childhood surveillance implants, memory recall devices and immersive dating apps into our outstretched binge bowls, ‘Black Mirror’ begins with arguably the best episode of the season.
Starring ‘Friday Night Lights” Jesse Plemons, ‘Westworld”s Jimmi Simpson and ‘Chewing Gum”s Michaela Coel, ‘USS Callister’ imagines the revenge of a brilliant nerd constantly belittled by his co-workers.
Smart, spoofy and entirely satisfying, the first episode is about as lighthearted as it gets with ‘Hang the DJ’ coming in a definite second after the Jodie Foster directed but predictable ‘Arkangel’ and the harrowing ‘Crocodile’.
Bleakly mining the depths of Nordic Noir, ‘Crocodile’ introduces the technology that will be everyone’s undoing a way into the episode. A device that can access one’s memories used in criminal cases and insurance claims. Though Brooker’s world building is fast becoming a thing of legend, one can’t help compare this technology to the memory recall tech in ‘The Entire History of You’. A far more palatable episode than ‘Crocodile’ which suffers from unconvincing leaps towards the homicidal in the main character’s arch.
Just as unsettling is ‘Metalhead’ which envisions a world in which robot dogs hunt humans in a desolate, dystopian future. Scant on dialogue and backstory, shot moodily in black and white and based on the real life Boston Dynamics’ robot dogs, ‘Metalhead’ is perhaps the most aesthetic of the anthology in a season in which the misses outweigh the hits.
Speaking of the latter, this season ends with ‘Black Museum’. An Easter egg filled retrospective, world expansion and stand-alone story all rolled into one. Starring Letitia Wright in a house of horrors episode alongside Douglas Hodge, ‘Black Museum’ is an episode for the fans as Brooker returns to serve up diverse casts and original stories while bending minds the way only he can.
‘Black Mirror (2017)’ season four is now streaming on Netflix.
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