Summary
The baseline level of quality in front of and behind the camera remains high, but the days of Black Mirror being genuinely provocative and challenging television are seemingly over.
This review of the Netflix series Black Mirror Season 6 does not contain spoilers.
Reviewing an anthology series is largely a waste of time because the conclusion is almost always the same. “It’s a mixed bag”. Reviewing a season of Black Mirror feels even more fruitless. Everyone’s going to watch it regardless, as evidenced by the fact it has only gotten more inconsistent over the years and yet still commands the attention of the entire entertainment industry when it releases.
This is in part thanks to name value, but also because of the show’s adherence to formula. It is so understood that the best episodes of Black Mirror are all speculative technophobic dystopias that the show’s title has long since become a shorthand for cautionary near-future sci-fi. Anything even remotely concerned about the long-term effects of burgeoning technology is Black Mirror-esque; the lightest bit of media satirization is “like something out of Black Mirror.” And so on, and so forth.
The impulse of boundary-pushing television is to throw off the shackles of expectation. Rarely, though, is this a good idea in the long term, because once you remove everything that was great about a show in the first place, what remains? Some of Black Mirror Season 6, a new five-part collection after the trio of largely disappointing episodes in the not especially well-received fifth season, is your answer.
Black Mirror Season 6 review and plot summary
Many would admit that the transition of Black Mirror to Netflix heralded a cavalcade of big-name stars but also a wavering, less daring quality; an unwillingness to put these A-listers through the wringer in the same way that poor old Rory Kinnear was tormented in that iconic premiere, where he played a sitting UK Prime Minister conned into copulating with a swine.
The premiere of this season is “Joan Is Awful”, a playful send-up of Netflix that is uncharacteristically toothless in its refusal to make fun of any of the streamer’s legitimate controversies or problems. Some decent twists and fun performances notwithstanding, it’s the kind of Black Mirror episode it feels like an imitator might make.
The streaming service introduced in that episode, Streamberry, which is the Big N right down to the logo, the UI, and the now-iconic “tudum” jingle, teases the second episode – a true-crime series titled “Loch Henry” – in its thumbnails. It’s hard to imagine Black Mirror of old indulging in such cutesy on-brand continuity.
Stuff like “Mazey Day” is similarly misguided, a backward-looking attack on the tabloid press and its relationship with celebrity, only given a frisson of topicality in 2023 by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pretending they’re still in the late-90s, being pursued in high-speed chases by the paparazzi.
Only one episode, though, gets its own subcategory. The fifth and final installment, “Demon 79”, is billed as a Red Mirror story, one totally devoid of technology and knowing satire. Instead, it’s a straight-up supernatural horror-comedy, the best of the bunch on the strength of its buddy dynamic between an Indian retail assistant in a racially restless late-70s English north and a demon manifesting as the lead singer of Boney M, but also the worst in how dissimilar it is from the best of what Black Mirror can be.
Is Black Mirror Season 6 good or bad?
At its best, this season repackages our new favorite pastimes as looming horrors. At its most middling, it strips away everything that makes Black Mirror great to deliver straightforward, unmemorable genre fiction. And at its worst, it delivers well-worn ideas rendered toothless by obligations to the very media platforms it is satirizing.
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Given the talent both in front of and behind the camera, there’s only so bad this series can be. Every episode contains at the very least a lively performance, a neat twist, or a stirring image or idea. But there’s nothing here to rival the aforementioned “The National Anthem”, or the Emmy-winning “San Junipero”. There’s really nothing here that’s even especially memorable.
Is Black Mirror Season 6 worth watching?
And that’s a real shame. Black Mirror has transitioned from one of the most creatively daring and worryingly prescient shows on television to yet another brand exercise for an industry leader. As the budget and the curb appeal of the IP increase, almost in spite of the quality of the episodes, more and more stars are lured into the lumbering machinery of a once-great series. At this point, the most daring cautionary tale Black Mirror could tell would be its own.
What did you think of Black Mirror Season 6? Comment below.
You can watch this series with a subscription to Netflix.
