Black Mirror

Black “mirrors” are all around us – in our pockets, on our walls, on our desks. They represent the headlong advance of digital technologies. The genius of Charlie Brooker’s anthology series Black Mirror is to look for just a brief moment into the future and to examine the potential implications of those technologies for our lives and our society. And those implications are terrifying – for personal relationships (in the stories “The Entire History of You” and “Be Right Back”); for politics (“The National Anthem,” “The Waldo Moment”); for public control (“Fifteen Million Merits,” “White Bear”); and for all the above (“Black Mirror: White Christmas”). The settings may be a near future but, of course, the questions these speculative fictions raise are really with us right now – watch them soon, before their nightmare worlds come to pass. Written (mostly by Brooker, but with a telling contribution from Jesse Armstrong), produced and performed to a consistently excellent standard, these startling and wildly entertaining cautionary tales for modern times resonate in our imaginations long after the credits have rolled. For its brilliantly dark reflections of our captive gaze, Black Mirror receives a Peabody Award.