BLACK MIRROR Season 6 Takes Place in a Godless, Disturbing World
By Ethan Connor, Movieguide® Contributor
The hit Netflix series BLACK MIRROR returned for a sixth season, featuring five new standalone sci-fi thriller episodes and a star-studded cast including Salma Hayek, Aaron Paul, and Josh Hartnett. Episode length ranges from 42-minutes at the shortest, and 80 minutes for the series’ longest episode. Each episode of BLACK MIRROR peers incisively into humanity’s relationships with science and technology. The title itself notes that when our tech dies and our devices fail, we are left only to stare at our darkened reflections in the “black mirrors” of our blank screens.
“Joan is Awful” follows the eponymous female lead as she discovers to her horror that her life has been recorded and broadcasted to the world in a streaming series in which she is played by movie star Salma Hayek. The series shows the whole world Joan’s deepest, darkest secrets. She and Hayek decide to take revenge by sabotaging the corporation whose technology enabled this show to be created.
“Loch Henry” is the name of a quiet Scottish town whose formerly booming tourism business has fallen apart thanks to the shadow of a grisly set of murders that still lingers even a decade later. A film student who grew up there returns with his girlfriend to make a documentary about the killings, only to find that they may have been even closer to home than he realized.
“Beyond the Sea” depicts an alternate Space Race in which America developed the technology to project astronauts’ consciousnesses into artificial, lifelike replicas of their bodies back on Earth, while they sleep peacefully up in their spacecraft. One astronaut’s family life crumbles as he tries to help his co-pilot through a traumatic loss.
“Mazey Day” is a Hollywood movie star addicted to alcohol and psychedelics, who goes missing after fleeing a hit-and-run accident. A paparazzi reporter hunts Mazey Day down to earn a $30,000 payday in exchange for pictures of her and tests the limits of how far she will go for her story.
“Demon 79” follows an Indian immigrant in 1979 London who communes with a demon, who tells her that unless she murders three “human sacrifices” in the next three days, the world will fall to a nuclear apocalypse. At first reluctant, she eventually uses her terrible commission to seek revenge on people who have wronged her.
BLACK MIRROR’s production quality and narrative tension are as on-point as ever. Despite relying primarily on thriller tropes and stock characters, the show keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat from start to finish. The acting is excellent, with noteworthy performances from the reliable Aaron Paul and Zazie Beetz, as well as the relatively unknown Samuel Blenkin and Myha’la Herrold. From a writing standpoint, the season is quite inconsistent, with “Loch Henry” and “Beyond the Sea” executing their concepts cleverly, to their credit, but “Demon 79” featuring disastrous attempts at social commentary and existential conflict.
“Joan is Awful” and “Beyond the Sea” are surprisingly the only episodes in the season to make good on the show’s defining concept, with the others including little to no scientific or technological material of any kind. “Mazey Day” has an interesting, original concept that unfortunately suffers from an unnecessary third act shark-jumping when a werewolf, of all things, is discovered to have been responsible for the core conflict of the story. “Joan is Awful” defaults to the oldest existential plot twist in the metaphorical book when the protagonist discovers the true nature of the machine she sets out to destroy. Overall, the impressive quality of this season’s performances, cinematography, and direction, not to mention the eerie, gripping score, make the positives outweigh the negatives from an artistic standpoint, but the flawed screenwriting leaves a noticeable aftertaste in most of the episodes.
Unfortunately, in spite of the numerous existential, life-altering crises the protagonists of each episode face, not once do any of them attempt to make decisions based on a moral or biblical worldview. The only scenario in which one of the major characters attempt to act out of true selflessness is when Aaron Paul’s character in “Beyond the Sea” allows Josh Hartnett’s to use his robotic replica to experience life on Earth after his own is destroyed. However, this act of compassion is severely punished, so much so that the audience can only consider it highly foolish, rather than admirable. Such a humanist worldview, written into each episode seemingly as a matter of course, is unsurprising for a show so focused on science as a pursuit in and of itself, apart from any type of inquiry into the deeper meanings of life beyond simply “advancing” in technological capability.
However, in their attempts to caution their viewers against this type of rabid advancement without second thoughts, the writers did not choose to offer the possibility that there could be deeper meaning to life such as religion, philosophy, or moral values. BLACK MIRROR, simply put, takes place in a godless world, where characters are forced to examine reality in unconventional, sometimes disturbing ways, but, sadly, find nothing underneath.
There is nothing for young audiences in BLACK MIRROR season six, which is laced with foul language, profanities against God or Jesus (including one scene where a woman defecates in a crowded church, though no fecal matter is shown on-screen), and sexual content (usually in the form of innuendos and references, with the infrequent, tastefully framed sex scene on occasion). Furthermore, every episode except “Joan is Awful” features bloody violence, either shown directly or implied. Add to this the frequent depictions of substance abuse, adultery in either thought or deed, and homosexuality—as well as “Demon 79”’s incoherent, fumbling attempts to take shots at right-wing politics and portray white men as uniformly perverted and oppressive—and this season of BLACK MIRROR tallies up to be excessive in nearly every area. Movieguide® advises extreme caution for older viewers.
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