Photograph: Netflix / Black Mirrorīlack Mirror is often written off as: “What if phones, but too much?” However, in Smithereens, Andrew Scott updates this to: “What if acting, but too much?” There are moments of scenery chewing in Smithereens that would put locust plagues to shame, but underneath that is a very simple and fairly effective hostage thriller that works right up until you realise that its larger message is literally just: “Wow, people look at their phones a lot.” 14. Arkangelīlack Mirror isn’t exactly a series that shies away from a heavy-handed metaphor, but the climax of this Jodie Foster-directed story – where a girl literally beats her mother to death with an iPad – is so hilariously on the nose that it has to be self-satire. But wait, what if those monsters were just normal people disguised by an augmented reality chip in the soldier’s head? Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you? Except you did, right from the very first frame. Men Against FireĪ soldier stalks the earth, murdering a number of grotesque mutant monsters. Especially the climax, where the man who controlled the bear suddenly finds himself homeless and truncheoned in a dystopian police state, which is a little bit of a leap. Points scored for preempting the rise in populist non-politicians – here, a wiseacre cartoon bear becomes an unlikely political figurehead – but points lost for execution. Photograph: Hal Shinnie/Channel 4 picture publicity A conveyor belt of Charlie Brooker’s worst excesses, this is an episode that feels as if it was made by a broken Black Mirror algorithm. There’s a montage of people crying and screaming to Radiohead’s most overblown song, and then it turns out that the boy was watching child porn all along. The hackers release the masturbation footage anyway.

The end of this episode – in which hackers blackmail a boy for masturbating to porn – is the television equivalent of being beaten over the head with an especially stupid rock. Plus, and this is rare for Black Mirror, it’s so pleased with itself that you just want to punch it. The scene where she murders a blind baby with a hammer that’s still dripping with gore from his father’s skull remains the epitome of Black Mirror’s off-putting tendency to be nasty for the sake of it.Ī compilation of half-thought-out, sub-Saw morality tales that tread so much worn ground (a woman’s consciousness is transferred into an abandoned toy, a murderer is turned into a hologram that can be repeatedly electrocuted) that it teeters on the edge of self-parody. Andrea Riseborough plays a surly murderer forced to cover her tracks as she goes on another surly murder spree. An hour of television so relentlessly dour that it leaves nothing for anyone to cling to.

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