![]() ![]() Joan Is Awful (season six, episode one)īrooker turns his satirical eye to Netflix itself in a clunky episode in which Joan (Annie Murphy) discovers that he life has been adapted into a streaming series starring Salma Hayek. Alas, this tale of a beat ‘em up video game with benefits never lands its punches.Ģ5. São Paolo makes for an uncanny backdrop – you expect the cityscapes to look American but they don’t quite – and stars Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Nicole Beharie do their best. This places pressure on Danny’s already inert marriage to Theo, though the consequences never feel authentic to the characters. Pals from back in the day, Danny and Karl, take their friendship to a new level when they hook-up inside a virtual reality Tekken-type video game. A satire with a big shiny capital “S”, Fifteen Million Merits lands its blows. But is it really insightful to point out that reality television is screamingly cynical, or that life is a game in which the odds are stacked against ordinary people?Ģ6. Striking Vipers (season five, episode one)īlack Mirror sets out to remake San Junipero but can’t quite recapture the magic. ![]() Bing ( Daniel Kaluuya, later to find fame as star of horror-satire Get Out) is one of the indentured masses, for whom life revolves around earning credits by pedalling an exercise bike – thus generating enough energy to justify their existence.Ī TV talent show clearly inspired by a certain Cowell-esque franchise offers the downtrodden the means to escape – but when Bing gifts his stash of credits to a young woman (Downton’s Jessica Brown Findlay) so that she can tread the primetime boards, the depth of the regime’s hypocrisy is laid bare and our hero resorts to extreme measures. George Orwell meets Simon Cowell in this razor-blade satire of consumerist culture, written by Brooker and his wife Konnie Huq (who knows her material, having presented the Xtra Factor on ITV2). Fifteen Million Merits (season one, episode two) But the one being not entirely honest is Nish – even if she has her own, shockingly good reasons.Ģ7. It rapidly becomes clear that Haynes is a) a pioneer in medical technology and b) a nasty piece of work. The triptych is linked by seedy curator Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge) proudly showing a rare visitor, Londoner Nish (Letitia Wright), around his Midwestern museum of criminal paraphernalia: “there’s a sad, sick story behind most everything here,” he explains. None of the three stories of tech-gone-wrong – one horrific, one tragic, a third cautionary – outstay their welcome, but there’s simply not enough time to develop most of the characters sufficiently to engage the heart as well as the head. This was the much-trailed Black Mirror portmanteau episode, and it displayed both the strengths and weaknesses of the format. Now season six of Charlie Brooker’s Netflix anthology is finally with us, here’s our ranking of every episode so far – from worst to best. In fact, a dip back into its most haunting offerings may even offer some delicious schadenfreude. But, fingers crossed, it’ll never get quite as dark as Black Mirror. Feel like life has got pretty dystopian recently? You’re not wrong. ![]()
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