FILM REVIEW | TV REVIEW
The Evolution of Black Mirror: Embracing a Strange Present and Exploring a Familiar Past
From cautionary tales of tomorrow to sobering narratives of today
Black Mirror is a show like no other. With few exceptions, each episode in its first four seasons centers around a futuristic technology, and the depictions are disturbingly well-realized.
But before even the arrival of the fourth season, I’d begun to wonder just how long the formula Black Mirror had established could work before growing stale. How many of these ground-breaking innovations could it depict before inspiration begins running thin? Even the most acclaimed futurists can only muster so much foresight into the confounding futures that still lie ahead. From its first season, though, that’s always seemed to be Black Mirror’s mission: predict and bring to life the eerie technologies of tomorrow.
But as the 2010s continued rapidly onward, our realities grew into something more and more sci-fi. Surely there were times when reality stole ideas directly from Black Mirror’s lap as it attempted to brainstorm the concepts for future episodes. In a few instances, reality has overtly adopted ideas from the dystopian anthology show.
