We don’t know how old they are, where they come from, what their interests are, or what they do for work - we just know that they’re supposed to meet each other, and the app (referred to as “Coach”) has only given them 12 hours together.Ĭole and Campbell’s performances anchor the story, conveying that Frank and Amy are both vulnerable, but they wear it differently. In the episode, we experience the app through the eyes of awkward Frank ( Joe Cole) and sunny Amy ( Georgina Campbell). And “Hang the DJ” offers a nefarious evolution of the kind of modern dating apps many viewers are all too familiar with. In the Christmas special, people can block each other from their lives by altering the device in their eyes called Z-Eyes, a biotech evolution of the way we can block people from our various social media feeds today. In season one’s “The Entire History of You,” for example, people have the ability to fast-forward and rewind their memories, even the painful ones, like the way we fast-forward or rewind a DVR. Often it does so by presenting an episode’s paranoid-future technology as an extreme extrapolation of something that’s already known and used in contemporary society. The beauty of Black Mirror is in how efficiently it makes us understand the mechanics and structure of any given episode’s central technology (okay, maybe not the strange mechanical drone bee one). “Hang the DJ” works because we understand the technology so well As “Hang the DJ” unfurls, it becomes clear that the most terrifying thing about this premise is also what gives it a glimmer of hope: that humans will put themselves through anything for that promise of being loved forever. One person’s idea of relief might be another person’s horror, and vice versa. How would you act if you knew there was an expiration date on your relationship? Could you let yourself love someone if you knew you had to say goodbye in five years? What kind of courtesy would you give a three-day stand? How much of yourself could you give someone if you knew they weren’t the one?Īll of us have our own answers those hypotheticals, as well as our own emotional responses to the questions “Hang the DJ” invites. Amid all these relationships, the app promises to find users their one true love, a 99.8 percent “perfect” match.ĭirector Timothy Van Patten and series creator Charlie Brooker, who wrote the episode, not only give us one of Black Mirror’s dystopian tales but invite us to apply the fantasy of that dating app to our own lives, our relationships, and our attitudes toward finding love. The cutting horror of “Hang the DJ” comes from flipping that power dynamic: Instead of choosing which people we date from a pool of attractive suitors, the episode invites us to imagine an app that not only picks our dates for us but also determines how long each of those relationships will be - complete with ominous-looking men wielding tasers to enforce the rules. Cast information is also from IMDb.In Black Mirror season 4, humanism triumphs over nihilism - but only barely In the case of a tie, episodes with more user ratings were ranked higher. All 27 episodes of Black Mirror were ranked based on average user rating as of July 2023. To determine the best episodes of Black Mirror, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data on audience reception from IMDb. (These are America’s favorite fictional robots. Ocular and cranial implants appear more than a few times, as do robots. Another common element in the series is virtual or augmented reality, whether it is used for video games or to help soldiers find and eliminate targets. Multiple episodes deal with the possibility of our memories being recorded and replayed – possibly against our will. For instance, the terrifying power of social media platforms permeates the series, with characters who lose their livelihoods, and even their lives, due to their online social standing or interactions – a scenario that is already all too real. The often horrific outcomes are disturbing, yet sadly conceivable. “Black Mirror” – the title refers to the black reflective surface of a smartphone, computer, or tablet screen when it’s not in use – uses each standalone episode to take some aspect of modern life to its extreme, exploring possible dystopian futures shaped by humanity’s obsession with social media, the advent of digital surveillance, and the dangers of current experimental technology. (Here’s a list of the best international shows ever to stream on Netflix.) Modeled after “The Twilight Zone,” the series first aired in 20 on the British network Channel 4 before being picked up by Netflix. A long-awaited sixth season of the British speculative fiction anthology series “Black Mirror” dropped June 15th on Netflix.
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