Black Mirror is a British television drama series created by Charlie Brooker. I like to think of it as a really good modern twilight zone. More information can be found at this link.
Apologies if there already is a thread, but I wasn’t able to find it. If there isn’t a thread, I’m surprised no one is discussing this show. If there is, then hopefully I can edit the subject to make this about the 2nd season.
The first episode of the second season just aired, and I thought it worked really well despite what must sound like a seriously goofy premise on paper. It took things a bit too far into the pulpy zone for me when the
Spoiler
AI husband was resurrected as a golem half way through the episode,
but I really like how creepy they kept the proceedings even after that. The episode didn’t feel like it had much in the way of payoff, either, but overall I was really won over by the premise of
Spoiler
a construct personality based off intense social media crawls.
Still nothing as shocking as the first season. That was something special.
I’m guessing that has to do with the series being poorly and vaguely described on this forum, mostly. I’d be interested in it if, you know, instead of just posting spoilers and vague references to another incomplete thread, someone were to mention the premise of the show, whether it’s a comedy or drama or both, and how and on what network it can be seen.
It’s really hard to describe without spoiling, because it’s basically a series of one-offs with no narrative continuity between the episodes. They’ve all got a strain of dark humour running through them (I’m going off the first season only), and they’re all dystopic to a greater or lesser degree, but that’s about the extent of the generalisations you can make. I guess you could say the premise of all of them is taking current (British) societal and technological trends to grotesque extremes, but that’s not going to tell you much. Some episodes are explicitly sci-fi, others not. It’s on Channel 4 in the UK - don’t know if or where it has been picked up in the US or Canada.
It’s by Charlie Brooker, whom you may know from Dead Set, if not his writing. If you liked Dead Set, and not just because you’re a zombie fan, then you’d probably like Black Mirror.
If only there was some avenue of information available to those who were curious. Some type of search function that exists on a worldwide scale that one could use to find information about something they’re curious about.
Don’t know if you guys know, but Charlie Brooker’s one of “us” - he’s a gamer and wrote for the UK games magazine PCZone many moons ago, and was one of its most notable contributors. He was a bit like Yahtzee; almost all his reviews were acidic and laugh-out-loud funny (in fact I’m pretty sure Brooker must have been an influence on Yahtzee’s style of game review). But he did occasionally rave about some games, like (IIRC) Quantic Dream’s first flawed, but forward-thinking effort, Omikron, and the wonderful Outcast.
It’s been quite nice seeing him moving up the ranks over the years, to become one of the UK’s funniest and most thought-provoking TV commentators and (now) writers.
Don’t know if you guys know, but Charlie Brooker’s one of “us” - he’s a gamer and wrote for the UK games magazine PCZone many moons ago, and was one of its most notable contributors. He was a bit like Yahtzee; almost all his reviews were acidic and laugh-out-loud funny (in fact I’m pretty sure Brooker must have been an influence on Yahtzee’s style of game review). But he did occasionally rave about some games, like (IIRC) Quantic Dream’s first flawed, but forward-thinking effort, Omikron, and the wonderful Outcast.
More recently he did the one-off TV show Gameswipe, which, while largely aimed at a non-gaming audience, was still the least patronising videogaming TV show I’ve ever seen on British telly. Admittedly that’s not saying much.
Thanks, Mr. Yellow, for doing a far better job on summarizing this show than anyone else here has so far. In fact, in hindsight I’m realizing that no one has even really tried to summarize. The original thread mentioned The Twilight Zone, and that’s important and apt but they understated that reference – Black Mirror is not only a solid successor to The Twilight Zone, but you could say that it is its true successor and that it’s even better than The Outer Limits. If you are a TZ or OL fan, you will probably be drawn into this show very quickly.
