‘Hang the DJ’ Is ‘Black Mirror’ at Its Most Beautifully Cynical (Commentary)

That stretches the concept of how few episodes a TV series can feature before its even a TV series anymore and not a lose confederation of movies under one brand. Fans of the pre-Netflix Black Mirror could easily argue about the episodes amongst themselves, picking and choosing favorites as one would any of the then six Star Wars films. Then, as tends to be the case on television: Each one would be double the size of the original seasons at six episodes a pop. Netflix and Charlie Brooker have now nearly doubled the original output of Black Mirror in under two years.

Each new episode of Black Mirror runs the risk of saturating the modern sci-fi Twilight Zone parables market that it, itself, has cornered.

Ranking Season 4’s episodes. Here’s our opinion on the best of the new episodes. Remember that we’re using the Black Mirror scale of greatness, so every episode is ranked from great to life-changing.

He has gone from spewing invective about the state of the culture to being one of its leading exponents, weighed down with prizes, plaudits and, we can bitterly presume, a terrific amount of money. On the arrival of its fourth series, there are other pressures on Black Mirror, too. Having moved from Channel 4 to Netflix in , Brooker has near-total creative freedom and a budget to match. Black Mirror has never felt as if it were made by drama students, exactly, but now there is no excuse for anything to be less than polished.

The programme also bears the burden of prescience. Being proved right is double-edged for sci-fi. The purpose of the fiction is not to throw darts at an obscure future board but to skewer the way we live now. Metalhead is the first Black Mirror episode to be shot entirely in black and white, appropriately for the most minimal plot in the series. Inside the building, however, the situation rapidly deteriorates.

The horror is merciless, and the CGI monster horribly believable. One strength of having a robot hunter, rather than an animal, is that it gives us access to its reasoning. When the dog is confronted by a problem, it improvises. In a broader sense, Metalhead explores the classic AI debate about the unintended consequences of design.