Black Mirror’s Sea­son 4 review: Get set for more Orwellian nightmares

Once upon a time, the main top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion expect­ed at any sea­son­al soirée con­sist­ed of the who­dun­nits at the Christ­mas office par­ty, the rank­ing of just how shit the past year has been and, of course, the oblig­a­tory swap­ping of total­ly over­rat­ed New Year’s Eve plans. Thanks to Char­lie Brook­er, how­ev­er, we have now found a way to suc­cess­ful­ly avoid the excru­ci­at­ing small-talk and jump straight into the one thought on everyone’s mind: the lat­est sea­son of Black Mir­ror. And as has been the case since its pre­mière episode, ​‘Nation­al Anthem’, in 2011, Brooker’s lat­est ven­ture into the world of sci-fi hor­rors does not disappoint.

Open­ing with ​‘Arkan­gel’, Brook­er eas­es us in to the new sea­son with an indie style episode focused on the rela­tion­ship between a sin­gle moth­er and her daugh­ter. We are intro­duced to Marie’s daugh­ter, Sara, the very minute she is born, allow­ing us to gain a good under­stand­ing of what moti­vates her per­sist­ing fears and her deci­sion to employ high-tech par­ent­ing methods.

Direct­ed by Jodie Fos­ter, ​‘Arkan­gel’ explores the com­plex­i­ties of moth­er-daugh­ter rela­tion­ships with­out ever giv­ing too much away about its pro­tag­o­nists. Oth­er than the episode’s open­ing min­utes, we have no back­sto­ry to help shape its main char­ac­ters, and yet, we can feel what moves them. Black Mirror’s pre­mière episode may have been ​‘light’ com­pared to the mind-bog­gling world pre­sent­ed in ​‘White Christ­mas’, but it per­fect­ly cap­tures our con­tra­dic­to­ry rela­tion­ship with tech­nol­o­gy. We want all the secu­ri­ty perks we can pos­si­bly get even though we are aware of unescapable con­se­quences. But as long as we can be tricked into feel­ing safer, we are quite hap­py to ignore the dan­gers lurking.

Brook­er already proved his knack for the noir genre with sea­son three’s ​‘Hat­ed in the Nation’, but this season’s Croc­o­dile takes the style to a whole oth­er lev­el with its Ice­landic back­drop. The episode burns slow­er than any oth­er Black Mir­ror episode has before and evokes the same kind of chill­ing view­ing-expe­ri­ence as The Killing and The Ket­ter­ing Inci­dent.

‘Croc­o­dile’ offers an inter­est­ing take on what the world would be like if it were pos­si­ble for oth­ers to access our emo­tion­al mem­o­ries – and by oth­ers we’re talk­ing cops, insur­ance bro­kers and the likes – and how this may cause the past to catch up with you. Although the episode’s premise is intrigu­ing, it is dif­fi­cult to estab­lish any kind of con­nec­tion to its pro­tag­o­nist, and as such, the impact of the over­all sto­ry­line falls some­what flat. On the plus side, ​‘Croc­o­dile’ makes up for its lack of twists with a dark­ly humor­ous end­ing that will leave you imag­in­ing Brook­er chuck­ling away as he wrote it.

‘San Junipero’, Black Mirror’s most sur­pris­ing episode so far, turned out to be a sea­son three favourite, so when rumours were born about a pos­si­ble sea­son four sequel fans could hard­ly con­tain their excite­ment. Alas, Kel­ly (Gugu Mbat­ha-Raw) and Yorkie (Macken­zie Davis) did not get their sequel, but ​‘Hang the DJ’ might just be the per­fect con­so­la­tion prize. Star­ring Georgina Camp­bell and Joe Cole in the lead roles, ​‘Hang the DJ’ invites us into a strange, mod­ern world in which your dat­ing life is pre­de­ter­mined for you.

With the help of an advanced dat­ing sys­tem, sin­gles are prompt­ed to reap all the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences need­ed to final­ly meet ​“the per­fect match” through a strict­ly timed and mon­i­tored approach to blind dat­ing. The episode’s world is every bit as entic­ing as the one pre­sent­ed in ​‘Nose­dive’, and com­ple­ments its roman­tic sto­ry­line with styl­is­tic colour­ing choic­es. It doesn’t quite reach the same lev­el of emo­tion as ​‘San Junipero’, but will leave you feel­ing equal­ly touched.

Per­haps the most Black Mirror‑y of all episodes this sea­son is ​‘Black Muse­um’. Set in a road­side muse­um in the mid­dle of a desert land­scape, the episode presents three sep­a­rate sto­ries in one, bring­ing a per­fect bal­ance of humour and hor­ror to the screen. Where­as many of sea­son four’s episodes don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly fit the show’s ​“typ­i­cal” approach to the nar­ra­tive and tech­nol­o­gy pre­sent­ed with­in, ​‘Black Muse­um’ delves deep­er into the con­cept of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and fools you into expect­ing a cer­tain out­come when, real­ly, it is about to hit you with the total­ly unexpected.

‘USS Cal­lis­ter’, this season’s fea­ture-length episode (star­ring Chew­ing Gum​’s Michaela Cole) has been a favourite among crit­ics so far, where­as the short, exper­i­men­tal hor­ror episode ​‘Met­al­head’ has failed to gen­er­ate much buzz. This appears to be a com­mon prob­lem with anthol­o­gy shows, which do not have reg­u­lar char­ac­ters or styles to rely on in terms of keep­ing their audi­ences engaged. Audi­ences tend to like at least some form of famil­iar­i­ty and are reluc­tant to embrace big changes and, with ​‘Met­al­head’ being shot entire­ly in black and white, this may have reached a lit­tle too far out­side of the audience’s com­fort zone – which is, of course, a con­tra­dic­tion in itself, see­ing as that is exact­ly what Black Mir­ror sets out to do: make you feel uncomfortable.

Black Mirror’s fourth sea­son has tak­en on a dif­fer­ent tone, and while some episodes may feel unfa­mil­iar in com­par­i­son to ear­li­er sea­sons, the show con­tin­ues to thrive in its depic­tion of Orwellian night­mares, its cin­e­matog­ra­phy and excel­lent casts in a man­ner few oth­er shows can. Ideas pre­sent­ed in this sea­son may not linger as heav­i­ly as ​‘Men Against Fire’ or ​‘The Entire His­to­ry of You’, but they’ll def­i­nite­ly give you the fod­der need­ed to liv­en up forced hol­i­day affairs with inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions as to the pros and cons of crown­ing the Christ­mas tree with an Arkangel.