Although “Joan Is Awful,” the first episode of Black Mirror’s sixth season, might have briefly led devoted viewers to believe the series was holding fast to its usual thematic formula, it doesn’t take long to realize that the show has evolved into something altogether different from what it once was. That is to say, it’s no longer really “futuristic.” Instead, most of the five-episode season opts to delve into the past…perhaps because the present has become too bleak in a way that Black Mirror once used to caution against (but clearly failed to scare people enough with regard to what might become of us all should we give in so willingly to technological “advancements”). Indeed, there were frequent jokes that Black Mirror’s four-year hiatus—assumed to be an implied “end” of the series without explicitly saying so—was precisely because the world had “gone too Black Mirror” anyway. In other words, why bother trying to make life come across as more depressing and dystopian than it already is?
It is in this manner that the sixth season, still lovingly and meticulously written by series creator Charlie Brooker, seems to use the crutch of relying on the past more than the present or near future to portray some “sci-fi”/“speculative fiction”-type of genre. Like most shows of its kind, Black Mirror takes its influence from The Twilight Zone, and yet, this is the first season where that influence comes across as more marked than usual. For, in seasons of yore, its sole focus on the dystopian detriments of technology was noticeably more steadfast. Now, like the Jordan Peele reboot of The Twilight Zone itself, Black Mirror is all about “off-kilter” storylines as opposed to incorporating cautionary elements pertaining to technology gone horribly astray. What’s more, in the aforementioned “Joan Is Awful,” all Brooker really does is take the seed of The Truman Show and put it on steroids. So no, not much originality there, save for the “Streamberry” (a.k.a. Netflix angle) and the need to go ultra-meta to outdo previously ultra-meta fare like Scream. That meta-ness pertaining to the “twist” of the Joan we think is “real,” played by Annie Murphy, actually existing on “fictive level one.”
In this sense, Brooker uses the nightmare of The Truman Show with an updated slant primarily inspired by the implications of AI (which, again, is already here, not off in some distant future). Particularly as Hollywood reckons with that very threat amid the writers’ strike demanding not only fairer contracts and royalties that account for the streaming era, but also assurances and provisions about AI. Whether or not those provisions would mean limiting the extent to which AI can essentially “take over” a writer’s job entirely is unclear. Though it seems the executive level studio types are far more suited to being replaced by machines. Alas, those in control are the last ones to admit that they’re the least useful. And it’s among the key causes of Joan, the quintessential “average” woman, ending up with a “prestige” drama centered on her middling, expectedly uninteresting life. Another factor in Brooker’s grand statement in this episode is the idea that so many people—particularly in the post-social media climate—suffer from “main character syndrome.” This being a term popularized by none other than current social media “main character” TikTok. As for Joan, she initially laments to her therapist at the beginning of the episode, “I feel like I’m not the main character in my own life story.” This “The Truman Show thinking” being the cause for so much of why humanity has evolved into such a selfish species, with every person convinced they are not just the main character of their own life, but the main character of all existence itself.
Joan soon finds out she would be happy to have remained as someone who has no “main character energy.” Much like Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni) in Woody Allen’s 2012 movie, To Rome With Love. For he, too, is an utterly pedestrian, banal human who suddenly becomes the focus of international attention after waking up one morning to find that the paparazzi arbitrarily decide to follow and photograph him wherever he goes, and that he resultantly garners a legion of fans interested in what he’s doing all the time.
Indeed, Brooker would note of creating the “Joan Is Awful” episode, “I was also thinking about ‘main character syndrome’ on social media, where an average person fucks up and becomes the whipping boy for the day. So I sort of glommed those ideas together. It does feel very timely, and obviously for Salma Hayek and Annie Murphy, it spoke to them as actors. This is stuff that they’re already being confronted with and thinking about—how to have control over their own image and where that goes. It’s probably one of the most overt comedy episodes we’ve ever done as a Black Mirror, and at the same time it’s quite an existential nightmare.”
In contrast to Leopoldo’s existential nightmare, however, Joan does not have a nervous breakdown when the attention disappears as quickly as it arrived. Instead actively working to make the “show of her existence” go away after it wreaks catastrophic effects on her personal life. This means going to rather embarrassing lengths to get the attention of the person playing her on the show: Salma Hayek. Who turns out to have just as little agency in the use of her image as Joan, as alluded to by Brooker above. Though, in Joan’s defense, the only reason her likeness can be used is because she rotely agreed to the Terms and Conditions (as so many of us do) put forth by Streamberry in order to use it. In contrast, Hayek more willingly surrendered to this “deepfake heretic abomination” in her “image rights agreement” with Streamberry. One that “specifically covers any acts or behaviors Joan may exhibit, up to, including and beyond defecation.” In other words, the AI-generated version of Salma Hayek can be puppeteered to do pretty much whatever without Hayek being able to take legal action.
This soon leads her to take matters into her own hands, joining forces with Annie Murphy, who is really just playing Joan in “fictive level one.” Something Annie has to come to terms with as “Beppe,” the Joan Is Awful “switchboard operator,” if you will, points out, “Have you seen where you live? Uh, who could afford a place like that? It’s a TV show house. I mean, look at me. Michael Cera licensed his face, just like Annie Murphy licensed her face to play Joan on level one and Salma Hayek licensed her face to play Joan on level two.” It’s a mind fuck, to be sure. And Michael Cera playing Beppe is certain to keep emphasizing that by repeating, “We’re not in reality right now, this is fictive level one.” Where “Source Joan” is the material from which “Annie Murphy Joan” is drawn.
It’s possible Brooker opted to kick off season six with this episode because it is, to be sure, the most “on-brand” for Black Mirror. But with episode two, “Loch Henry,” the show takes a decidedly more “analog,” “grounded-in-the-present” turn. As a fundamentally British series (originally premiering on the UK’s Channel 4, and with both Brooker and producer Annabel Jones hailing from the island), it’s only right that the stage for this episode should be set in the fictional Scottish town of Loch Henry. Where a Black film student named Pia (Myha’la Herrold) has been taken by her white bread boyfriend, Davis (Samuel Blenkin), to visit his patently racist mother, Janet (Monica Dolan). Janet’s house, however, is meant to be just a pit stop along the way to where they’re really going: to film a man who is a rare egg “defender” in Rùm, one of Scotland’s Small Isles of the Inner Hebrides. However, as Pia starts to learn more about why Davis’ town is fundamentally deserted despite being so idyllic and picturesque, she realizes the more worthwhile story for their student film project is the true crime one that unfolded there in the early 90s. Davis’ old friend, Stuart (Daniel Portman), who works at the only pub left and wants to drum up tourism again, is all for it as he helps them gather interviews and footage detailing the grisly murder of tourists by farm boy Iain Adair (Tom Crowhurst).
Of course, what Davis and Pia never bargained for was that the former’s mother and deceased father were actually the ringleaders behind the multiple murders, with Iain as mere accomplice offering up his creepy-ass basement for their sick jollies. By the end of the episode, Brooker gets across his intended point that the true crime junkies who get off, ultimately, on the pain and suffering of the victims in the “story” are also as heartlessly “content-obsessed” as any viewer of Joan Is Awful. But there’s nothing “futuristic” about that. What’s more, wielding characters who are “psychologically fucked in the head” is a source for drama as evergreen as anything technology could provide. Except that, again, Black Mirror is a show intended to be rooted in the damaging effects of technology. Not garden-variety true crime “content.” At the same time, with both “Joan Is Awful” and “Loch Henry,” Brooker threads together a central theme of our collective obsession with “content.” Not only gobbling up as much as we can of it, but being “aroused,” as it were, by the anguish and “awfulness” of others…as though it might make us feel better about our own lives and wrongdoings.
In episode three, “Beyond the Sea,” Brooker goes in his most blatantly “grasping at straws” direction vis-à-vis focusing on the future. Because, in lieu of that, he opts for an alternate-history version of 1969, wherein NASA obviously made far greater advancements than Kennedy ever would have expected. Because, in this version of the year, astronauts David Ross (Josh Hartnett) and Cliff Stanfield (Aaron Paul) are able to go up in space and also go back down in a pinch to their “replica” bodies. In this way, they can spend time with their wife and kids without the hullabaloo of having to “ride back down” in their spaceship. Not that they could, for it’s a six-year mission. And part of having that replica option is a means to keep both of them from going insane as a result of only having each other to communicate with. Unfortunately, such a “freakish” innovation rubs certain people the wrong way. Namely a cult leader (this being an overt nod to Charles Manson’s domination over the year 1969) who goes by Kappa (Rory Culkin) and breaks into David’s house with his cult gang while he and his family are sleeping.
After David wakes up to try to defend himself and his brood, Kappa slices off the replica’s hand to reveal a mess of mechanical parts that further confirm his desire to destroy David for not being “natural.” Nor does Kappa believe his wife or children are for going along with living with this “robot” as though it’s their “real” husband and father. Thus, David is made to witness the brutal murder of his family, in addition to the cruel fate of his own replica being destroyed so that he’ll be forced to stay solely on the spaceship for the remaining four years of the mission. Seeing his astronaut partner start to lose it, Cliff fears David might try to kill himself while Cliff is off inside his replica. This could culminate in the spaceship crashing while Cliff’s real body is still on it. And then it’s all over for him, too. Thus, it is his wife, Lana (Kate Mara), who suggests that Cliff offers the “link” to his replica to David. Because maybe a bit of “fresh air” will do him some good. That, and the ability to draw and paint again. It doesn’t take long to see that this plotline is going to veer into some very freaky-deaky “swinger-y” territory (after all, alternate-history 1969 still can’t avoid the swingers angle—and, lest one forget, that was the same year Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice came out). What one doesn’t expect, however, is that Lana, the proverbial bored housewife reading Valley of the Dolls, isn’t going to take the bait of “David’s” dick when it’s offered. And it’s offered via the same “maneuver” he pulled with his wife by playing the original French version of “Beyond the Sea” and trying to finger her.
Scandalized by herself, she rebuffs David’s advances and runs back into the house. Lana and Cliff’s son, Henry (Daniel Bell), sensing something decidedly “off” every time David enters his father’s replica, reacts by defacing the painting of the Stanfields’ home that David’s been working on/keeps using as an excuse to come back down to Earth. When Cliff learns of the entire sordid debacle, he goes ballistic on David and bans him from ever using his replica again. But obviously, David, with nothing left to lose and no one else to obsess over, is not going to just step aside without retaliating. The end result applies to that age-old adage, “Misery loves company.” And oh, how miserable Cliff is in that last scene.
The notion of people feeding on the misery of others is also a central theme of the fourth episode, “Mazey Day.” Set in 2006, the year after TMZ was born, it is another case in point of how this season has deviated from those of yore. And yet, Brooker was adamant in noting of season six’s direction (and Black Mirror as a whole), “Humans are weak is the story, rather than technology is evil, because I love tech.” Nonetheless, it’s apparent he knew that this season might cause some upset with its departure from the norm, as he stated, “The thing I was trying to do this season is divorce my own mind from what the show is meant to be.” That said, why not have a mercilessly stalked celebrity named Mazey Day (Clara Rugaard) turn out to be a werewolf and that’s the real reason she has to go to a remote rehab facility? And yes, in case you needed confirmation, it’s definitely the most “meh” episode of the season, especially as it vastly under-utilizes the time period it’s supposed to be set during.
For the finale, “Demon 79,” Brooker again takes us into the past. In fact, the episode is introduced as being a “Red Mirror Film,” stemming from a “retro-themed horror anthology series” offshoot that Brooker had in mind before making it part of season six. And this time, the past we’re taken to, as the title of the episode indicates, is 1979. The place: North England. Where mild-mannered Nida (Anjana Vasan) works as a shoe salesgirl in a department store. As the overt minority of the town she lives in, she is met with blatant racism and hostility in all facets of her life. This includes someone spraypainting “NF” on her front door. The abbreviation for the racist, fascist political party known as the National Front. At that time in history, it had, indeed, gained a frightening amount of traction among England’s voting population. Another non-alternate history aspect of the year is the constant threat and fear of nuclear war as catalyzed by the ongoing Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. Something Brooker uses to play with the notion of Armageddon as he makes Nida the sole source of salvation for all of humanity when she accidentally pricks her finger while opening a drawer and makes blood contact with a demonic talisman. This unleashes Gaap (Paapa Essiedu), who takes on the appearance of Boney M’s Bobby Farrell to make her feel more comfortable with listening to his directions. Those directions being to kill three people within three days to avert the apocalypse. Her hesitancy to adhere to this advice leads Gaap to show her a news report about tensions of nuclear detonation rising.
Feeling the pressure (while also feeling insane), Nida surrenders to doing the demon’s work, eventually setting her sights on a racist political candidate named Michael Smart (David Shields) as her final kill. And when Gaap shows her that his future holds becoming Prime Minister and causing countless racially-motivated murders, she’s convinced of her choice. Even when Gaap tells her the Big Demon downstairs won’t like it because he’s a fan of “Michael’s work.” Nida bites back that she’s within the rules of who to kill for her sacrifice and won’t change her mind. All the while, apparently, a romantic bond between lonely Nida and lonely Gaap has formed. Which leads to an unlikely happy ending amid a “sad” one for the rest of humanity.
So yes, as you might notice, Black Mirror is not quite itself these days. But then, have any of us really been since 2019 ended and the horrifying 2020s began?
