The latest season of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian hit series Black Mirror reflects a world shattered by capitalism, argues Lucy Nichols

The latest instalment of Black Mirror is an impressive addition to Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology series. The programme moved from Channel 4 to Netflix in 2016. After initial disappointment from the US entertainment giant, series 7 of Black Mirror is a welcome return to its roots.

The new series brings us six episodes, each boasting impressive casts and interesting storylines. The programme as a whole focuses on the interaction of human nature and technology, more often than not with large tech companies willing to sink to any low to make profits (‘where have we seen this before?’, one may wonder).

This is really the only motif that recurs in Black Mirror. Each episode brings a totally new cast and storyline, aside from the grand finale, which is a continuation of the fantastic ‘USS Callister’ episode in series four.

The opening episode in this latest series is perhaps the strongest. ‘Common People’ is predicated on a private healthcare company literally sucking the life out of patients through a chip inserted into the brain. Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd are phenomenal in this heartbreaking episode, which is probably one of the saddest episodes of Black Mirror as well as one of the best.  Given the strength of the first episode, some of the other episodes were slightly underwhelming, though still better than prior seasons.

Stand-outs included the fantastically silly ‘Bête Noire’ about a young food scientist whose life starts to fall apart after a former classmate turns up at her workplace. ‘Eulogy’, starring Paul Giamatti was another heart-wrencher, and ‘Plaything’, starring Peter Capaldi, a slightly jarring delve into sci-fi horror. ‘Hotel Reverie’, despite the fantastic cast with Issa Rae and Emma Corrin, is the only disappointment in an otherwise very strong season.

Some may interpret Black Mirror as a warning for a future filled with multi-national, all-powerful tech companies come to ruin our lives for the sake of endless growth. In fact, the phrase Black Mirror has almost become a catch-all for spooky dystopian technological steps forward.

It would be easy to imagine a Black Mirror episode about a far-right billionaire backer of a president, who uses profits from his tech company to fund neo-Nazi organisations. An episode about another tech mogul sending his girlfriend and Katy Perry into space in the name of great leaps forward and ‘girl power’ would also be an entertaining watch.

Aside from being vaguely left-wing, Charlie Brooker is not a genius or prophet, and Black Mirror does not predict the future. Brooker is, however, adept at capturing and exaggerating increasing alienation from technological advancement under capitalism. The NHS is in what appears to be a perma-crisis, and big pharma is allowed to run riot in the US: what if, one day, private health companies do turn to subscription-based healthcare? What happens if technology starts to control us, rather than the other way round?

These big questions are answered in Black Mirror and, for the sake of entertainment, almost always end in tears for the poor ‘common people’ who wind up victim to the ever-persistent pursuit of profit.

Of course, were these things to happen in real life, we would have to build a mass movement to save humanity’s dying soul from the grips of evil technology. But that wouldn’t necessarily make for good TV.

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet