The seventh season of Black Mirror is, relatively speaking, quite good. I say this as a longtime skeptic of creator Charlie Brooker’s high-tech Twilight Zone—an anthology series that, in my estimation, has produced more emotionally manipulative nightmare fuel than trenchant insight into where all these so-called innovations are leading us. But the show has been on an upswing since veering into camp with its fifth season, a three-episode nadir that produced not a single compelling story. Scattered but often intriguing, Season 6 marked both an improvement on its predecessor and a departure from the series’ typically grim, ironic, dystopian science fiction.
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Now streaming on Netflix, Season 7 marks a return to form, in that most of its six episodes are premised on some near-future technological phenomenon. Yet it retains the previous season’s mix of tones and genres—not just effectively saving viewers who are already marinating in the AI dread of the present from an anxiety spiral, but also teasing out subtler kinds of responses to the relentless march of progress. The unifying themes are memory and history, the haunting influence our personal and collective pasts might have on the future. The prevailing mood is wistfulness. From a sequel to the fan favorite “USS Callister” to a disarmingly poetic take on artificial intelligence in Hollywood that is probably the best Black Mirror episode since the latter Season 4 standout, the new batch offers plenty of highlights. Even the weaker installments have something to recommend them, but for those whose patience with the show is limited, here’s a worst-to-best ranking of the seventh season with mini-reviews to help prioritize your viewing.
6. Episode 4, “Plaything”
A vintage cyberpunk tale nested within a near-future crime procedural, “Plaything” opens in the year 2034, when a convenience store owner calls the cops on a wild-haired man (Peter Capaldi’s Cameron) who tries to steal a beverage. It turns out Cameron is wanted in connection with a 40-year-old murder. Back in the mid-’90s, he explains to his interrogators (James Nelson Joyce and Michele Austin), Cameron (played in flashbacks by Lewis Gribben) worked as a video-game journalist. Summoned to meet a brilliant, troubled creator (Will Poulter’s Colin), he’s presented with a program Colin describes as “software that elevates us—improves us as human beings.” It’s called Thronglets, and it allows users the oddly satisfying experience of caring for adorable digital creatures who multiply as they’re nurtured. But these are no mere Tamagotchis. On an acid trip, Cameron discovers he can understand the birdsong-like sounds they make, which allows him to start fostering the environment they need to execute their utopian aims.
It’s an intriguing premise, built around Brooker’s hard-to-dispute pessimism about the inherent human capacity for cooperation. Wise, strange, and oddly serene, Capaldi’s Cameron contains the raw material to support every plot twist, while Poulter is smartly deployed in his brief but haunting appearance. The problem is the thronglets themselves—a signifier of societal harmony whose emptiness renders the episode’s commentary superficial. As a result, a conclusion that seems like it’s supposed to be shocking lands as a glib, abrupt cop-out. For a truly profound take on the intersection of technology, gaming, community, and individual genius, seek out Halt and Catch Fire, the great AMC drama that followed a team of all-too-human innovators through the personal computing revolution of the 1980s and the proliferation of the internet in the ’90s.
5. Episode 5, “Eulogy”
Slight but elegantly executed, “Eulogy” casts Paul Giamatti as a variation on the lonely, bitter, know-it-all characters that have become his signature in movies like The Holdovers, Sideways, and American Splendor. When Giamatti’s Phillip is recruited to contribute memories of an old girlfriend who has just died, Carol, to an “immersive memorial” that will be part of her funeral, he receives a kit via drone. Inside is a wearable device equipped with a humanoid AI guide (Patsy Ferran) to talk him through photos and mementos from his time with Carol, when they were artsy, pre-smartphone punks living in a Brooklyn squat. It isn’t an easy process, since he scratched and scribbled her face out of every photo after the breakup. Though decades have passed since then, Phillip still blames her for ruining his life. But a spin through his artifacts suggests that he may be responsible for many of the missteps that doomed their relationship.
It’s hard to imagine any actor better suited than Giamatti to play this role; he beautifully captures the sadness and isolation that underlie Phillip’s prickly demeanor, the self-pitying orientation towards the world that cost him his happiness. With Ferran gently pushing back on his POV as the pair virtually inhabits the images he’s retained, “Eulogy” riffs on A Christmas Carol (the name of Phillip’s late beloved can’t be an accident). But I wish Brooker and co-writer Ella Road had extracted more from that source material—more humor, more energy, more insight—than the sentimentality and regret that keep this downbeat episode from gaining much momentum.
4. Episode 2, “Bête Noire”
In this slow-burn psychological thriller, Maria (Siena Kelly) is a rising star at a food development company whose fortunes change around the time that an old high school classmate, Verity (Rosy McEwen), joins the team. They were never friends; Maria was popular, while Verity was a computer geek. But now, Verity seems to have lost all traces of her teenage awkwardness. Also, since her arrival, Maria keeps misremembering things, with increasingly serious consequences.
You could describe “Bête Noire” as a sci-fi Gaslight for our time, though it doesn’t really have the depth or drama of its predecessor. If it lingers at all in your mind, it will be less as a tech-satire brainteaser and more as an anti-bullying PSA. The plot feels a bit stretched out; there’s too much filler between the point when most people will guess what’s going on and the climactic confrontation. But that showdown is tons of fun, when it finally happens. And the two lead performances, from young British actors who’ve yet to do much stateside, are appealing enough to make me want to check out their earlier work. McEwen resembles Nicole Kidman in her early-’90s To Die For era, not just in her similar physical features but in her quiet intensity; turns out, she’s set to play a younger version of Kidman’s character in an upcoming Amazon series.
3. Episode 6, “USS Callister: Into Infinity”
By day, Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) was the nebbishy programmer behind the massively multiplayer online game Infinity; he cowered in his office as his business partner, James Walton (Jimmi Simpson), took credit for his creation and pushed him to code updates faster. But by night, Robert immersed himself in a private version of Infinity tricked out to mimic his favorite Star Trek-like TV show and played all-powerful commander to a team of sentient, captive—and miserable—clones of Walton and other co-workers. Then he uploaded the wrong employee, Cristin Milioti’s Nanette Cole, who figured out how to liberate the USS Callister from his computer and set it free in Infinity’s online universe. Her successful escape also killed Robert, in real life.
That was the plot of “USS Callister,” a breakout episode from Black Mirror’s fourth season whose kitschy tribute to vintage sci-fi TV doubled as an indictment of male, keyboard-warrior rage. Season 7 ends with a worthy, if less focused, sequel that promotes Nanette to captain. But things aren’t going so great in the game, with its 30 million players. “When we were trapped on Daly’s computer, we only had to deal with one sociopath,” Nanette says. “Now, we’ve got a whole universe full of them.” Plus, Walton’s greed has left the crew with no choice but to attack gamers and steal the buyable credits required to survive. Meanwhile, in the physical world, a journalist is on to Robert’s illegal DNA-cloning exploits, and Walton is desperate to kill the story. Twists come fast, with various degrees of effectiveness. And by the end of the 90-minute episode, I felt as though I’d had a few too many ideas thrown at me. But the geeky humor of this micro-franchise goes a long way; the sequel might be funnier than the original. As much of a joy as it is to see this cast reunited, “Into Infinity” lands as more than just gratuitous fan service.
2. Episode 1, “Common People”
Black Mirror is often at its best when imagining how technological advances might alter our romantic relationships, whether that looks like the idyllic queer afterlife of “San Junipero” or the memory-chip hellscape of “The Entire History of You.” The first episode of Season 7, “Common People,” doesn’t quite equal those classics. But it’s a very solid throwback, starring Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd as a sweet married couple. She’s a teacher; he’s a metalworker. And they’re scraping by, socking away extra cash in hopes of getting pregnant again after at least one miscarriage. Then Jones’ Amanda collapses in the middle of a class. At the hospital, Mike (O’Dowd) learns his comatose wife has a brain tumor that conventional medicine considers inoperable. Luckily, an experimental biotech product, Rivermind, can save her. As the startup’s slick sales rep (Tracee Ellis Ross) explains, the surgery is free. The catch: Rivermind is a subscription service whose monthly fee will strain their budget. Also, Amanda is going to sleep an hour or two more than she normally would, to give the servers a break. Mike agrees. Of course he does. Isn’t $300 a month a small price to pay to save the life of the woman you love?
But it was never going to be just $300. As with our existing frog-in-slowly-heating-water subscription culture, an upsell is inevitable. Suddenly, advertisements start spewing from Amanda’s mouth that disrupt her life and threaten her job—and can only be stopped with an exorbitant upgrade from Rivermind Common to Rivermind Plus. The parallels to Netflix’s own tiered service aren’t subtle. Now that he’s making tech satire for a global entertainment monolith, Brooker can’t seem to resist rattling the cage, even if he denies that it was his outright intention (see also: Season 6 streaming satire “Joan Is Awful”). Yet the real-world resonances of “Common People” run deeper. A stratified health care system, the branding of mere survival as luxury, the sense that scientific advances only exacerbate inequality; it’s all reflected in the elegantly horrifying metaphor that is Rivermind. While Jones and O’Dowd balance tenderness with dark humor, Ellis masters the art of cold corporate politesse. Considering that the episode is named for Britpop legends Pulp’s 1995 eat-the-rich anthem, though, I have to deduct a couple points for the lack of a needle drop.
1. Episode 3, “Hotel Reverie”
Major streaming services (like Netflix) rarely license movies more than a few decades old. Great leading roles for women and people of color, even if they’re A-listers, can be hard to find. Then there’s AI, threatening to change the cinema forever with dubious innovations that rob the art form of its humanity. A Black Mirror episode devoted to escalating Hollywood crises such as these was inevitable. The surprise is that, instead of cooking up the kind of furious parody you might expect from a series whose premiere used bestiality as a nauseating political metaphor, Brooker weaves these entertainment-industry woes into an exquisite feature-length episode that has the grace, romance, and melancholy of a classic silver-screen melodrama.
Midcentury relic Keyworth Studios is floundering when its head (Harriet Walter) hears a pitch for an AI tool called Redream. Together, she and the company’s rep (Awkwafina) plan to use the technology to quickly, cheaply remake Keyworth’s Casablanca-like masterpiece Hotel Reverie with a contemporary star. While the Ryans Reynolds and Gosling pass, Brandy Friday (Issa Rae), a big name frustrated with “noble victim or f-ckable sidekick” parts, seizes the chance to step into a lead role originally occupied by a white guy. What she doesn’t know is how literal that shoe-filling will be. Redream plugs Brandy’s consciousness, Matrix style, into a virtual recreation of the movie. Her co-stars are AI copies of the characters, programmed to replicate the film’s original performances as long as Brandy sticks to the script. (It’s best not to ask too many questions about the mechanics of all this.) Yet something about Brandy triggers an unanticipated response from her character’s love interest (Emma Corrin), which throws the project into chaos. Flecked with humorous details (Brandy is warned that dissolves might make her queasy) and shaded with dark undertones, “Hotel Reverie” also feels hopeful and profound in its insistence on the impossibility of abstracting an artwork from its quintessentially human origins.
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