Charlie Brooker
Black Mirror 5

LA RECENSIONE

Black Mirror is one of the most important TV series out there; it's more than a TV series, and seeing it mistreated like this by Netflix hurts. The warning signs were there in the fourth season and especially in last winter's interactive movie. But now it's a full-blown crisis, and it doesn't seem like there's even an effort to hide it anymore.

Three episodes, long ones at that, with no fresh insights into future technologies and aberrations (the soul of the series) but rather on elements almost contemporaneous with us, if not entirely present in today's world. Virtual reality video games, social networks, and smartphone addictions, talking dolls, and pop stars bent to the manager's will. Banally treated topics, furthermore with a moralistic tone and an inexplicable tendency toward happy endings, or non-endings, but only due to a lack of courage to deliver a blow to their protagonists.

Here, Brooker seems to have become timid, he dares very little nowadays. Visually, it's at zero, just like in futuristic imagery. But the author is lazy and conservative even in story management, never so indulgent and full of second chances. This is not Black Mirror, it's another Netflix TV series, yet another useless one, with plots meant for 15-20 minute episodes, like Death Love Robots, but it's not Black Mirror.

Then, to be fair, there are a few insights, but they're just a couple of moralizing speeches that you could hear in a church group meeting about video games and social media. Really, the discovery of warm water. It's a pity because, for example, Moriarty (from Sherlock) acts like a god in the second episode, and the idea of an immersive video game used for ulterior motives is good, but it is handled timidly in the developments.

In the episode about social media, there's a long police-style preamble (with hostage and "ransom") to arrive at the plainest and simplest of considerations about smartphone use while driving. Much more interesting are the jabs thrown here and there at Facebook and Zuckerberg. Finally, yet another take on the concept of consciousness cookies, but used for the dullest of possible stories, where the positive role is played by Miley Cyrus, go figure.