Black Mirror Season Three review: still hitting that uncomfortable sweet spot Prepare to feel exquisitely uncomfortable in the most delicious of ways – Black Mirror is back. Now exclusively on Netflix […]

Prepare to feel exquisitely uncomfortable in the most delicious of ways – Black Mirror is back.

Now exclusively on Netflix for its third season, the gleefully twisted anthology show has launched six brand new standalone episodes.

There’s some big-name actors, high-profile directors, and – at times – a bit more presence from our friends across the pond. But fears that it would all go too ‘Hollywood’ are unfounded.

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Its gritty gallows humour and cutting cynicism, so beloved of the British, remains largely intact.

Brooker has rarely been better

At its best, Black Mirror continues to combine the cautionary sci-fi of The Twilight Zone with creator Charlie Brooker’s scathing thirst for social, media and pop culture satire.

The feature-length ‘Hated In The Nation’, ostensibly a police drama but with plenty more up its sleeve, might be the strongest offering here.

Shifting from compelling crime mystery to eerie horror as Kelly McDonald’s cop follows the threads, it boasts suspenseful, gripping sequences and a deeply satisfying narrative.

Finding room for everything from a Katie Hopkins-style shock columnist to a slimy cabinet minister, Brooker’s fiendish wit has rarely been better enacted.

Also right at the top of the pecking order is ‘Playtest’. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, the man behind this year’s excellent big screen thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane, it’s an enjoyably creepy caper that’s perfect Halloween viewing.

Bolstered by a likeable and charismatic lead and some smart effects work, its tale of a backpacker plunged into an augmented reality horror game is packed full of in-jokes that should delight video game fans.

As a bonus, it offers a cheeky nod to the show’s slight transatlantic shift in production and personnel, with its baffled American protagonist served Marmite on toast by his British host at one point.

From grim realism to glitzy excess

Black Mirror’s variety is impressive in terms of themes and tone, but scope and style too.

‘Shut Up And Dance’ is a focused and earthy affair; a taut thriller about a teenage boy forced to follow the instructions of an unknown group after they ensnare him online.

Enlivened by Jerome Flynn’s haggard, foul-mouthed fellow victim, it shifts away from the futurism of its fellow tales to the claustrophobic alleyways, petrol stations and budget hotels of the modern British towns.

That’s a world away from the vivid neon and technicolour of ‘Nosedive’, directed by Atonement’s Joe Wright and starring Jurassic World’s Bryce Dallas Howard as a status-obsessed social climber.

Set in a garish and superficial dystopian realm where people are constantly rated by others for their actions, and the average score determines their life chances, its world is intentionally super-bright and sickeningly saccharine. The effect borders on nauseating.

As an American-accented James Norton wryly remarks at one point: “There’s sugary, and then there’s diabetes.”

Technology still a potent topic

Season three’s social commentary is a little hit and miss. It feels heavy handed in ‘Nosedive’, and elsewhere takes a backseat to more dramatic considerations.

But Brooker and his fellow writers still find room to tackle mass government surveillance, internet harassment, and our obsession with social media. And the darker side of technology’s interplay with society remains a potent muse.

The first two seasons of Black Mirror, originally broadcast on Channel 4, proved essential viewing.

Always thought-provoking and occasionally prescient (a Prime Minister committing sex acts with a pig, anyone?), they felt like dire warnings for a world struggling to foresee the potential consequences of each new digital breakthrough.

With season three, there’s less of the raw emotional punch and haunting, sinking gut feeling left by the disturbing ‘White Bear’, the tragic ‘Entire History Of You’, or the existentially terrifying ‘White Christmas’.

But Black Mirror still doesn’t do happy endings, and there’s ample food for thought to keep your brain ticking away at night.

When it hits that uncomfortable and unnerving sweet-spot, it remains superb, skin-crawling viewing.

Black Mirror is available to watch on Netflix UK now