I don’t remember who said it, but I find it to be true: “Twitter is word of mouth with far bigger wings than what we have in real life.”
I’m paraphrasing, but you get the sentiment. Often I see a lot of people from all over the world tweet monologues dissecting TV shows or I see tweeps (do people still say that?) discussing shows on their timelines.
I don’t mean Date My Family or the other banal shows force-fed to South Africans looking to wind down on a Sunday before they start a whole new week in a job they probably hate. Too deep? I digress. Anyway, it’s to those people who are going on about shows I have never seen before that I look for stimulating small-screen treats.
They don’t always get it right. I mean, really, Sense8 was a miss for me and Mudbound was so bad for Mary J Blige you would swear Kendu wrote the script.
But, sometimes, those chatterboxes and spoilers on Twitter are worth going down the rabbit hole for. For a while I’d been seeing people yap on about Black Mirror.
Initially, I just ignored it because those same people tweeting often sounded like secret society members who wanted the rest of us to be jealous of their clique, but wouldn’t let us in on anything that was actually happening in the show. That’s why it’s a secret, you know.
So I ignored it. Then I saw a DJ whose sets I always love just post a picture of what I presume to be his TV at home and there it was again: Black Mirror. I did a quick search on Netflix and found it. The fourth season has just come out so you know what I thought: “I need to get snacks for this binge session.”
I ran out of episodes before I ran out of Niknaks (in case you’re reading this, Niknaks, please send me a few packets of the chilli cheese flavour. K. Thx. Bye).
There are only three episodes in the first two seasons and six in the third and fourth seasons. And you might want to watch them with a loved one or a few friends because the scenarios make for great conversation pieces.
Created by Charlie Brooker, who was a journalist and humourist, Black Mirror is a sci-fi series that is anthologised, meaning: each episode is like its own mini-movie and none of the episodes tie in in a linear narrative. That’s great for those people who claim to want to binge-watch something and then wake up during episode eight and no one wants to go back to episode five so that they can catch up. Ha!
Most of the episodes present an alternate reality that is sometimes rooted in technology that doesn’t yet exist. While others are deep in an alternate reality where the social issues uncovered are far more interesting than the technology used. Like the episode about the prime minister who has to perform bestiality via live stream.
Oh, I didn’t tell you, there are no sacred cows here? Now you know.
One of my favourites was an episode where the humans have this small device that stores their memories and they can thumb through the device to relive those memories on a screen; and in HD; and in front of anyone they choose.
If we had that in the world right now, we probably would have no more world because everyone would’ve tried to kill their lovers at some point.
Black Mirror is the kind of series you want to tell everyone about but you can’t reveal too much purely because the plot twists are insane. Yeah, I’m sounding like those secret society members I told you about. But trust me. Watch Black Mirror.
* Black Mirror is on Netflix.