The return of Black Mirror has already sparked some strong reactions.
On Thursday, six new stand-alone episodes of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian drama premiered on Netflix, satirising various aspects of our modern world and showcasing its starriest cast to date.
Critics have almost unanimously heaped praise on Black Mirror’s seventh season, with The Telegraph, The Times, The Standard and Time all specifically hailing it as a “return to form” for the award-winning anthology series.
Here’s a selection of what critics are saying about the new season of Black Mirror…
“What was once a hard-edged, occasionally malfunctioning cyborg of a show has slowly evolved: Black Mirror 7.0 has a lot of soft tissue around the metal […] Anthologies are a hard gig. But this warmer, more convincingly human Black Mirror is easier than ever to forgive.”
“Can Black Mirror hold up when society is already through the dystopian looking glass? There’s nothing in the [seventh] season that will haunt you like some of the previous ones. But perhaps it’s a healthy thing that Brooker has kept things light(er) on the scares when real life has enough stomach-churning twists right now. There’s enough love and solidarity in these six instalments to make us hopeful, if only for a moment.”
“Brooker is on form. Given that there have now been 34 episodes, you do wonder when/if his vast imagination will run out.”
“A testament to everyone involved, season seven is home to instant classics aplenty that you’ll want to devour in no time at all and will stand the test of time, standing tall against many of Black Mirror’s episodic greats from seasons past.”
“Over a decade since he forced a prime minister to do terrible things with a pig, Charlie Brooker is still pulling the rug from under our feet in thrillingly ambitious ways. This is another eye-popping, brain-melting run of episodes.”
“If the previous two series felt curiously flat, this one fizzes with invention, humour and love, and finds the joy in the darkest of corners. Brooker’s back.”
“While [episode one], Common People, is indeed a slog, the rest of the season – including and especially the bracingly nasty second episode, Bête Noire, which upended my expectations, and then did so again – make the argument that the free-ranging imagination Black Mirror has demonstrated in recent years is for the good.”
“If Netflix deserves a pat on the back for anything, it’s nurturing Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. Ever since the streamer liberated it from Channel 4 after season two, the episodes for this twisted near-future look at our interactions with technology have gotten increasingly more complex, daring and loopy. With season seven, they deliver six more slick outings that run the gamut from poignant drama to paranoid fantasy.”
“Season seven marks a return to form, in that most of its six episodes are premised on some near-future technological phenomenon. Yet it retains the previous season’s mix of tones and genres – not just effectively saving viewers who are already marinating in the AI dread of the present from an anxiety spiral, but also teasing out subtler kinds of responses to the relentless march of progress.”
“While a couple of the six new episodes are as good as the best of Black Mirror and feature all the elements we have come to expect (including some terrific casting choices), it’s actually USS Callister: Into Infinity that is the biggest disappointment.”
“The pot-luck nature of the show has given way to an overabundance of bilge. Too many episodes rely on logic-straining mechanics, too few have the emotional sucker punch of San Junipero or Be Right Back. The horror too, of episodes like Shut Up And Dance or White Christmas, has given way to a repetitive fear of digital imprisonment. In short, this latest season of Black Mirror just doesn’t carry the same punch that it used to.”
All seven episodes of Black Mirror are available to stream now on Netflix.
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