The Greatest Show You're Not Watching: Black Mirror

Black Mirror is a television program that originally aired in England. Late in 2011, it aired its first season. Being British, that first season was only three episodes long. In 2013, Black Mirror aired another three episodes. For the longest time, Black Mirror was just this underground greatness that TV critics flew to England in order to get a glimpse of it. Recently, the States have received it as the DirecTV channel aired it. Luckily for us normal television watchers, Black Mirror's six episodes recently came to Netflix. Having just heard of this show on the periphery of the zeitgeist, I wasn't all that thrilled in checking it out. However, after the American fall TV period ended, I needed a show to fill the void. The first show that popped up to me was Netflix's Marco Polo, but after three plus episodes of that pile of garbage, I picked another show. That show just so happened to be Black Mirror. Boy howdy am I glad I stumbled upon this pile of greatness.

Black Mirror is an anthology series that shows the dark side of technology. Charlie Booker, the show's creator, stated, "If technology is a drug- and it does feel like a drug- then what, precisely, are the side-effects?" The elevator pitch you hear about this show is that it's the modern day Twilight Zone. While that's a pretty good comparison, it's somewhat of a misnomer. The Twilight Zone was genuinely freaky and scary and when you think of The Twilight Zone you think horror and suspense. That's the wrong way to think about Black Mirror. While both are works of science fiction, Black Mirror steers very much towards drama and many of its stories seem like they could happen in the very near future, There's no flying cars or hover boards, but Black Mirror is science fiction in the truest sense of the genre- it shines a mirror on society and shows us the ugly sides to life.

Every single episode of Black Mirror is its own isolated story. There's nothing that connects the characters in episode 1 to the characters in episode 6. This allows for each individual episode to tell a brilliant 45 minute story about one particular topic. In an era where mini-series are becoming the new king of television; where programs like Fargo and True Detective dominate Best Of lists, Black Mirror's finite-ness is the perfect treat to modern day television watchers.

At the end of the day, whether I'm watching a TV show or a film, all I want is a good and compelling story. I know that seems really dumb and obvious for me to say, but so many filmmakers seem to stray from this course. It's why shows like Mad Men can fall down the drain into oblivion and why we allow films like Foxcatcher to exist. Black Mirror gives me a new story every episode that leaves me both satisfied and makes me think. It's a series that I cannot recommend enough.

Despite how awesome Black Mirror is, I can't fully describe it without going into detail about each particular episode. So that's what I'm going to do, I'm going to describe in detail the entire series episode by episode. It's OK, You can go watch the entire series. I'll wait. You watched it? All of it? Good. Let's begin. Spoilers ahead (duh!).