TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. “Black Mirror,” the futuristic anthology series, presented its seventh season last week, streaming all six new episodes, including a feature-length sequel to one of the most popular episodes. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: The more I see of “Black Mirror,” the more episodes that arrive season after season, the more I think of creator Charlie Brooker’s futuristic fantasy series as a TV miracle. I look forward to every new batch of episodes, but because of my pessimistic personality flaw, I always start watching with trepidation that this new season is the one that finally will let me down. Well, Season 7 just dropped on Netflix last week, and once again, “Black Mirror” didn’t let me down. In fact, it lifted me up.
“Black Mirror” is an anthology series, which means virtually anything can happen in any episode because the main character doesn’t have to come back for the next one. And when I say virtually anything, I mean that literally, because several episodes of “Black Mirror” involve virtual reality, artificial intelligence and other high-tech, borderline futuristic concerns. “Black Mirror” is our modern day “Twilight Zone,” a much better and more consistent version of Rod Serling’s classic series than the recent Jordan Peele reboot ever was. But it’s also a modern callback to the 1960s series “Outer Limits” and to Kurt Vonnegut’s stories adapted by Showtime cable a generation ago.
Charlie Brooker and his team love twist endings and nonconformist characters and new technology, but they also love old movies and television shows. And in this new season of “Black Mirror,” that’s more apparent than ever. There’s one episode, “Eulogy,” in which Paul Giamatti plays a man who searches for clues in a series of photographs, like the photographer in Antonioni’s classic ’60s movie “Blow-Up,” except new technology allows Giamatti’s character to step inside the photographs and explore them from within.
Similarly, in another episode, “Hotel Reverie,” Issa Rae plays a movie star who’s cast in a remake of a vintage British film, except, thanks to a sophisticated artificial intelligence program, she’s inserted into the existing old movie to interact directly with those characters. It’s a new tech twist on the step-into-the-screen premise explored previously by Woody Allen in “The Purple Rose Of Cairo” 40 years ago and by Buster Keaton in “Sherlock Jr.” more than a hundred years ago.
And the first-ever sequel to a “Black Mirror” episode arrives this season with a new chapter of “USS Callister,” a delightful yet chilling story about a computer programmer who creates his own artificial universe based on a TV series very, very much like the original “Star Trek.” But my favorite installment of this new season, “Common People,” doesn’t draw from old movies or TV for inspiration. Instead, it draws from our shared experiences in real life with real technology. “Black Mirror” has been around since 2011, and by now, it’s built up its own familiar technology and look. So when it sets a show in the near present, just a few years away, it doesn’t have to keep reinventing the futuristic wheel.
Characters in many different episodes use the same immersive technology to play games or step into movies and photos. And there’s even a streaming company like Netflix that pops up under a different name, as it did last season. “Common People” stars Chris O’Dowd and Rashida Jones as Mike and Amanda, a happily married couple. Happily, that is, until a medical trauma leaves her brain-dead. Tracee Ellis Ross, a sales representative for a new high-tech company, offers him a chance to revive his wife’s brain functions by connecting her to a cloud-based service that can use its massive database to keep her functioning.
Of course, he signs up, especially since the lifesaving service is offered at a low introductory rate. Things seem wonderful at first. But when the couple goes on a road trip, Amanda blacks out suddenly and almost dies because the company has revised its coverage patterns. As the company spokesperson politely explains, the couple will have to pay extra to rise to a higher tier of service. Sound familiar? Of course it does, to anyone who’s subscribed to just about any streaming network. But in this new medical context, it also sounds both wryly comic and extremely chilling.
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TRACEE ELLIS ROSS: (As Gaynor) As you can see, we will be extending our coverage all over North America.
CHRIS O’DOWD: (As Mike) So we can travel?
RASHIDA JONES: (As Amanda) Yeah.
ROSS: (As Gaynor) Yes, if you upgrade, then absolutely you can travel.
JONES: (As Amanda) And if we don’t?
ROSS: (As Gaynor) Then you just stay within your existing coverage range.
JONES: (As Amanda) So you’re saying that we have to upgrade to plus if we want to leave the county?
ROSS: (As Gaynor) Right, yep.
O’DOWD: (As Mike) That’s not what you said when we signed up. You said it was just going to roll out everywhere.
ROSS: (As Gaynor) Yes, it is, with Rivermind+. That’s what this is. This is the rollout.
O’DOWD: (As Mike) How much is the plus?
ROSS: (As Gaynor) So it is $500 a month on top of the existing package, so $800 in total.
JONES: (As Amanda) Eight hundred bucks a month?
ROSS: (As Gaynor) Yeah.
JONES: (As Amanda) We can’t afford that. That’s not – we can’t…
ROSS: (As Gaynor) You don’t have to worry about that. I mean, if you choose not to upgrade, you’ll just stay on Rivermind Common.
JONES: (As Amanda) Common?
ROSS: (As Gaynor) And you will continue to enjoy experiencing the services that you already have at the current price point.
BIANCULLI: TV this good is a joy to watch. And TV this thought-provoking that has you remembering and relishing it for days and weeks afterward, that’s not just a joy, “Black Mirror” is a treasure.
MOSLEY: David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new season of “Black Mirror,” now streaming on Netflix.
If you watched the TV series “The Americans,” you just might wonder if your neighbor is really a Russian spy. Well, on the next FRESH AIR, Shaun Walker describes the real-life program the Soviet Union developed to train agents to embed for years as citizens in foreign countries. The program fell apart with the collapse of the Soviet Union but has been revived by Putin. I hope you can join us.
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MOSLEY: To keep up with what’s on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR’s executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I’m Tonya Mosley.
(SOUNDBITE OF DICK HYMAN’S “JUBILEE STOMP”)
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