Charlie Brooker’s dystopian Netflix show Black Mirror has returned for a sixth series with mixed reviews from critics. Its five new episodes deal with themes including paparazzi and audiences’ obsession with true crime.
In a three-star review, The Independent’s Nick Hilton said the show is “infected with classic Black Mirror tropes”.
But, he added, the latest season “also brings something new”.
“For the first time, Black Mirror is not merely holding the looking glass up to the damage wrought by technology, but to the self-inflicted wounds of society as well,” he said. “The resultant mishmash demonstrates that the best episodes of Black Mirror will always be dystopian, and experimenting with that winning formula is a fool’s errand.” Black Mirror started its life as a Channel 4 series in 2011, before being bought by streaming giant Netflix in 2016.
Its 27 episodes use technology to comment on issues facing society in the modern age. John Nugent of Empire was more generous with his rating of the new series, awarding the show four stars.
“If the form of the show might have evolved, the tone or outlook hasn’t,” he wrote. “Brooker’s dim view of humanity doesn’t seem to have thawed and while it’s rarely a cheerful watch, it’s never boring or especially predictable, either.
“At its best, ‘like something out of Black Mirror’ remains thrillingly open-ended,” Nugent said. “It is overall a fine collection of new episodes” wrote Lucy Mangan in The Guardian in another four-star review.
“But nothing quite stands out as the best Black Mirror has to offer – nothing that really unbalances the viewer, nothing that quite lays a new stretch of awful, unconsidered possibility bare and makes you desperately try and right your internal moral gyroscopes or grasp for certainties that are no longer there.”
This series consists of six episodes – Joan Is Awful, Loch Henry, Beyond the Sea, Mazey Day and Demon 79. A number of Hollywood stars featuring throughout including Rob Delaney, Salma Hayek, Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Angie Han was enthusiastic about the show’s latest offering, calling it “the freshest this series has felt since at least 2017”.
“Fans of the show’s tech-dystopia thought exercises might be disappointed to see the series cast them off altogether, and the shift in focus still yields as many misses as hits,” she said.
“But by breaking from those old constraints, Black Mirror sets itself up for a freer, wilder, more intriguing future.”
Many of Black Mirror’s previous series have received critical acclaim, with two episodes – San Junipero and USS Callister and the interactive film Bandersnatch all receiving Emmy awards for outstanding television movie.
Some of the reviews focus on writer Charlie Brooker himself, rather than the complexities of each episode’s plot. “Brooker is trying new things with his art and with his characters” wrote Daniel D’Addardio for Variety. “And even when they’re awful, we more clearly see the humans within the machine. “With great frequency, characters in Brooker’s universe either are utterly the victims of shifts in reality or take advantage of those changes to indulge their worst and most venal impulses,” he added. Hugo Rifkind from The Times called Brooker “a phenomenon” due to the “sheer volume of his output”. “He’s riding high, doing exactly what he wants, having won the right to do so because nobody could dispute that even his missteps are captivating. I hope he never stops,” he wrote courtesy the independent