Black Mirror is one of the best British series of the 21st century. What problems the creators of the project don’t raise in their futuristic parables: social networks, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, digital immortality… Each scene is so elaborate that you cannot just turn it on and play at https://20bet.com/ or chat via Facebook while watching it. Episodes aren’t connected to each other, and you can watch this show from any place. The only thing the series has in common is its creator Charlie Brooker and the theme of the impact of technology on people. Here are the best episodes of the series.
The Entire History of You (Season 1, Episode 3)
In an alternate future, people are implanted with a special chip. It records everything a person sees and hears, and then plays back the memories. Lawyer Liam Foxwell returns home in a bad mood after an unsuccessful job interview and catches his wife Fiona having dinner with old friends. Everything would be fine, but she seems a little too warm for her buddy Jonas… Using the power of the chip, Liam decides to find out what’s going on between these two. But he’d rather stay in the dark: the hero wasn’t ready for such answers.
The third episode of the first season does not give a clear answer to the question of what is better: the bitter truth or a sweet lie. It turned out to be more important for the hero to know the truth. But here are the methods by which he pursued it, immoral and cruel. It’s interesting that the motive of technology is not the main one here, and the theme of moral choice comes to the fore: if a person has decided to go all the way and ruin his life, he will do it even without advanced gadgets.
Nosedive (Season 3, Episode 1)
Young girl Lacey Pound lives in a world where people rate each other on a scale of 1 to 5 in real life. These scores form a social rating, which determines whether a person becomes everyone’s favorite or an outcast. The heroine lacks just a few points to rent an apartment in a luxury apartment complex at a bargain price. Here, a seemingly ready-made solution appears. Her childhood friend Naomi invites Lacey to her wedding, where our heroine must give a speech in front of influential and popular guests. Hoping for likes from the “tops,” Lacey goes to see her pal, but gets mixed up in one unpleasant story after another and ruins her rating. And that’s just the beginning of her downfall.
At first glance, the episode criticizes social media for its excessive influence on our lives, but the message goes a little deeper than that. What would happen if one were deprived of the ability to be oneself? Living in such a world would be unbearable: like Lacey, we would have to suppress our real emotions to please those around us. In this story, only the main character’s brother and the woman who drives the truck are left to be herself, but at the cost of her social ranking.
White Bear (Season 2, Episode 2)
Victoria Skillane wakes up in a strange room with no memory of who she is or who she was in her past life. Everywhere she is followed by silent onlookers filming her every move on their phones, and some types with a strange symbol on their balaclavas are trying to kill her. While running away from the sadists, the heroine meets the only sane people – Gem and Damien. They explain to her that television and the Internet are broadcasting a certain signal that turns people into stupid voyeurs, and it must be stopped. To do this, they need to get to the transmitter at White Bear. But there Victoria is in for a truly shocking discovery.
Probably the most controversial episode in the entire series. The theme of crime and the subsequent punishment is revealed here in a very ambiguous way. The series shows all the hypocrisy of a “just” society, where no one sees anything wrong in making fun of a frightened defenseless woman, albeit a convicted one. How, then, are the bloodthirsty park visitors any better than the criminal?
