Charlie Brooker's BLACK MIRROR

✅

good stuff, forks.

finally got around to watching the holiday special

the ending was kind of next-level bleak and cruel! it was set up throughout the episode but was still a little more than expected

the very end of the waldo episode might be the best humorous extrapolation due to the simplicity of the staging

http://sfplayhouse.org/sfph/2015-2016-season/the-nether/

if you're in the bay area, this is running for another couple of weeks and I'd recommend it pretty strongly. it's darker than the darkest episode of Black Mirror, though; it's as if they'd done an episode version of <i>The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect</i>. I stuck around for the question and answer last night and my favorite comment was about the morality of letting an actual 12 year old female actress handle the part, and they said 'we checked with her parents and gave them a script rundown and where we were coming from with it, and they ended up letting her decide, saying "we'd prefer that you find out these things about the internet through a work of art instead of from the internet itself" '

new Netflix-only series from the 21st october...

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-10-02/when-is-black-mirror-on-netflix

ty for headsup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-vAp9n8rQc

New series is out. Have watched two of the six so far.

Nosedive, the popularity one with Bryce Dallas Howard, is light with touches of darkness. It's not something I'd watch again but it was well done and the ending made me smile.

Shut Up And Dance though...God. I never thought I'd feel physically sick after watching something, and this was after guessing the twist and the outcome. Incredibly well done, but if I could pay for my memory of the episode to be wiped, I would.

"Nosedive"....ooooof. Fifteen minutes in, Stepford Wives af.

I've been meaning to watch this for years, sort of saving up for a special occasion, because I like Charlie Brooker. But more to the point, whenever I see the title "Black Mirror" I sing it to the tune of Kiss's "Black Diamond."

I've little familiarity with Kiss but I like this show

The ending made me so happy

very, very glad I waited until I woke up this morning to watch "Playtest."

there are at least a couple episodes in the new batch that invoke pure terror!

i've only watched the final two episodes of the new one so far but the final ep really could have been a stand-alone horror movie. just really effective in its scares, atmosphere, etc. the second-to-last falls into the trap people complain about which is when the in-character speechifying about the actual theme of the episode starts we're in trouble.

So gyac - would you not recommend watching Shut Up And Dance? I mean the first episode of season 1 left me feeling pretty queasy.

Watched the first one last night...facile but fun

Seems they always err on the side of obviousness

So gyac - would you not recommend watching Shut Up And Dance? I mean the first episode of season 1 left me feeling pretty queasy.

Having watched all 6, I would rank them:

1) Hated In The Nation (despite some weak plot points)
2) Shut Up And Dance
3) Playtest
4) San Junipero
5) Nosedive
6) Men Against Fire (though it's not bad at all, and was pretty painful at times).

Also, the casting is incredible. Especially loved Gugu Mbatha-Raw in San Junipero and Kelly McDonald in Hated In The Nation.

hated Shut Up and Dance, lazy hyper-sadism for its own sake. interesting that the most rote "BM being BM" episode was actually written by other people ("Nosedive").

about to watch the sixth ep, so far "San Junipero" is the clear winner.

Thanks gyac!

I've watched the first 3 episodes. "Nosedive" is definitely the best so far

Just finished "San Junipero," which was probably the most feelgood episode of this show yet. I liked it a great deal. That's enough BM for me for one day, though.

That's a definite high note to pause your viewing on

I scanned summaries of the last two episodes and...yeah, I can't handle that tonight.

"San Junipero" > "Hated by the Nation" >> "Playtest" > "Nosedive" > "Men Against Fire" > "Shut Up and Dance"

"Playtest" is the only time this show has legit scared me, maybe because I have fears similar to what happens in the episode. Pretty wild episode. The main actor was pretty obnoxious in it tho

"Nosedive" my favorite of this season so far. Kind of another version of the points episode from season 1 so I could see people not liking it, but I felt it was really well thought out and BDH was great

I did like "Hated by the Nation" a fair amount, but it did drag a bit at a full 90 minutes, and there was a minor plot detail that bugged me.

They're all just a little bit too long, as if they were originally written to be shown with ads on Channel 4, but were then stretched to fill the slots on Netflix.

Which are the non-brookers?

(Could look it up myself but am spoiler phobic)

So spoilers-wise, should i watch all six episodes before reading this thread? i've only watched ep 1 so far, the typical BM criticism of one-idea-stretched-too-long and taking it in the obvious places, but i did LOL at the end when they [SPOILERS] hit rock bottom and become the comments section

only ep 1 has a teleplay not attributed to Brooker (iirc), and even then he gets a story credit

i watched the first two eps of season 3 of this show. god it was stupid. really really badly written, confused sci fi with needless twists and leaden social commentary. well made, i suppose. but definitely a show that thinks it is far smarter than it is. "Nosedive" is an accurate description of that episode, starting off with an interesting premise before running it into the ground. that ending may be one of the worst, dumbest things i have ever seen.

Adam is totally OTM. These two episodes feel very nihilistic too, there's zero empathy for the main characters. It's like an Eli Roth (Hostel) take on techno paranoia. Yeah I get Brooker is cynical but christ.

"San Junipero" is really good though.

The last one is a lot of fun!

i may give it another shot in the future cos the show does have a Outer Limits-style goofiness to it.

re: Nosedive. there was a point when they were showing her marveling at dust particles in the sunlight, now free of her always-on AR social media stuff, it felt like they were about to make a really cool point. then she just starts insulting that guy and they yell at each other. yeah i guess it's supposed to be years of pent-up aggression she never got to let out and is now half purging half exuberantly reclaiming linguistic freedom. but it felt a bit gratuitous, her character was always kind of a huge jerk in her treatment of others anyways, it didn't seem to me like she was really being held back or censored by her social media AR lifestyle, she embraced it. everything she does is for her own self image, which i guess makes sense, narcissism, the black mirror of the reflective phone screen, etc. past that surface allusion they aren't saying much interesting. it's 1-dimensional fake sci fi coasting on near futurist renditions of trendy tech stuff.

what other point were you looking for them to make, Adam? I thought the dust particles moment said enough, that she was starting to appreciate stuff outside of her AR. I agree with you that this show can be very leaden with its commentary. I tend to like it more when it's entertaining enough for me to overlook the "message", or when the message is not clear. Episode 5 with the soldiers kind of mixed everything I don't like about this show into one package - too serious, too drawn-out, overly reliant on twists, and a super-long exposition about the message at the end

I watched Playtest and was inordinately upset by it. Kudos to Brooker and his team for making something so extreme but I really don't want a TV show to affect me that badly.

sometimes u just want to honk off at things and people without it being performative, just kind of feeling yourself

sad people were so obsessed with positivity that they had no negativity. they kind of did the negative performance biz with the election Waldo dude in another season, though

I had to stop the Playtest episode a couple of times to steady my nerves. Overall I thought it was very good.

Nosedive started well but was drawn out far too long, and deteriorated from the hire car scene onwards.

> only ep 1 has a teleplay not attributed to Brooker (iirc), and even then he gets a story credit

ha, ok, he said on the telly the other day that "a couple" had had other writers and i guess that's true given that there's that one and another that's a co-write. i'd envisaged something like the recent doctor whos where the main writer would be completely hands-off for a couple.

also, rashida jones?

i wonder if i will ever see these...

And a while ago, when we were doing the show, somebody sent me a link to a funny article that Mallory Ortberg had written that was taking the piss out of Black Mirror in an amusing way, and so we've hidden the phrase, "what if phones, but too much" in there as well, if you look closely.
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/black-mirror-netflix-season-3-charlie-brooker-interview

:)

watched the blackmail episode last night. scary!

(troll face)

it's horrifying and bad, but they went over the top enough that when the command to
FIGHT
TO THE DEATH

came through I cracked up

haha yeah, saw that one coming but thought they would make the other dude kill him after having bonded w/ him

the ending was really dumb and /SAW/ but the terror and plausibility of it was great

also, are we meant to believe the kid somehow murdered that dude?