While it's not the gut-punch of earlier seasons, the new Netflix series can still unnerve with stories of technology twisted to our darkest desires.
I don't remember the specifics -- something about virtual reality and memories and creeping body horror -- but I know I woke up sweating, disoriented and filled with dread. Technology and dread, the "Black Mirror" recipe, fills the show's most ambitious run yet.
Masterminded by tech-obsessed writer, journalist and curmudgeon Charlie Brooker, the third season is on Netflix now. Previous seasons were shown on British television and ran for three episodes but this new one, produced by Netflix, expands to six instalments
Sadly, the formula is spread a little thin. None of the new episodes quite reach the emotional gut-punch of previous highlights such as "Be Right Back" and "The Entire History of You". Nor do they achieve the satirical savagery of "15 Million Merits" or "The National Anthem".
Two episodes come close, though.
"San Junipero" is the most emotionally resonant of the new season. A jaunt into 1980s nostalgia stealthily sneaks in a heartfelt twist with a more hopeful vision for technology.
"Hated in the Nation" is an unremittingly bleak near-future tale that throws many of the worst things about modern life against the wall in a spiral of depravity, from social media witch-hunts to government surveillance to technology accelerating beyond our capacity to control it. It's all framed in a mash-up of police procedural and schlock-tastic B-movie.
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