TV Review: Black Mirror Season 5

Black Mirror Season 5

Starring: Anthony Mackie, Andrew Scott, Damson Idris, Miley Cyrus, Angourie Rice

Rating: TV-MA

Runtime: 3 episodes

Black Mirror is the British series created and written by humourist and critic, Charlie Brooker. As such this anthology series has both a hefty dose of dramatic irony and realistic fears about a future more and more heavily reliant on technology with every day. Now on its fifth season, Brooker has brought three new stories of society and the digital gone wrong.

One thing I noticed in this season is that it gives off a different vibe from the others – each episode could have almost taken place in the present day (indeed ‘Smithereens’ was set in 2018) with how close the technology shown feels to becoming reality. Perhaps that in itself is part of Brooker’s commentary – we are getting ever and ever closer to the stories seen within and they’re no longer relegated to some far-off potential future. They could take place next year or even next week. As each episode is standalone, they will be discussed separately below:

Striking Vipers

As a gamer myself, this episode was pretty fun – taking the concept of VR technology to its logical conclusion of full immersion of the senses, with two players escaping their everyday lives into that of their favourite gaming world. It’s all very tongue in cheek and the dilemma the two face, could perhaps have been tackled better or with more subtlety. Mostly, this episode is about sex and relationships particularly when people start to get older. It presents an interesting question – can the love life the main character experiences in the game be more fulfilling than his real-life marriage? As interesting as the story is, however, it’s definitely one of the less disturbing episodes of Black Mirror. It’s a shame the relationship is never explored more fully and is still left rather ambiguous, for both of the people involved in the video game as this episode could have been more thoughtful otherwise.

Smithereens

This episode was perhaps the closest in mood to the previous seasons – much more sombre in tone than the others and ultimately, the saddest in terms of storyline. Andrew Scott (known most famously for his role as Moriarty in BBC’s Sherlock) acts the part of Christopher, the cab driver -turned kidnapper with brilliance, conveying both menace and ultimately invoking sympathy. The episode highlights the theme of addiction to social media, something that was touched on with other episodes already such as ‘Be right back.’ Though the social network in question is fictional, there are definitely some parallels to certain ones currently in use.

There is nothing particularly shocking with this episode, however, with Christopher’s motive being given away a little too soon and the rest of the episode is rather predictable. Still, despite this, Scott’s performance is enthralling and the other characters were interesting enough to make this episode still worth a watch.

Rachel, Jack and Ashley too

This one was my favourite of the three – perhaps because I’ve always been interested in idols and while we’ve seen this done somewhat before in Black Mirror in ‘Fifty Million merits,’ it was never explored fully. Perhaps the most advertised episode, due to it’s casting of real-life music star, Miley Cyrus, as the pastel-perfect pop star Ashley O, this episode felt much more like an adventure story and yet more thoughtful than the other two with its commentary on the world of fame and music. The episode starts with Rachel, a young teen girl who finds solace in Ashley O’s music, unknowing that Ashley’s real life is under complete control from her aunt-come-manager. While Rachel’s story is relatable, it’s really her sister and Ashley herself (or her real-life counterpart, Jack) who make this episode work and ultimately steal the show. When Ashley O disappears from public life, trapped in a coma, Rachel only has a little robot called Ashley Too as support, a toy based off of Ashley’s actual personality. True to its theme around music, there is a lot of actual songs scattered throughout this episode, most of them surprisingly catchy – the finale song, in particular, stayed in my head for a good two days after watching!

Ultimately, this season was still interesting but a little disappointing when compared to previous seasons – I felt like none of the episodes really hit me too hard emotionally and they’re not likely to stay in my memory for too long either, compared to previous more hard-hitting episodes. Still, the acting is brilliant throughout, and some interesting concepts are looked at which make you think about how close we really are nowadays to living the reality seen within the episodes. So a weaker season perhaps by Black Mirror standards but still worth a watch, if you’re a fan or are interested in the dangerous hold technology, has on our current world.