Black Mirror season six: Skip the underwhelming first instalment and head straight for the best episodes

Charlie Brooker, the creator of Black Mirror, has acknowledged that the pandemic left his dystopian anthology series staring into the void. With reality quietly falling apart, who had room in their lives for sci-fi stories about how horrible the world is?

His solution has been to reimagine what Black Mirror means. Except for a disappointing first episode poking fun – but not too much fun – at Netflix, the long-awaited sixth season (streaming from today) is Black Mirror but with a twist. Several stories take place in the past. Another amusingly skewers our obsession with true crime (another dig at Netflix). Best of all is a rumination on early-21st-century celebrity culture. It shape-shifts into something I’m not allowed to tell you about – but which delivers an ending full of bite.

It’s just a shame the series starts with the most underwhelming episode, Joan Is Awful. It’s about a mid-level tech manager (Annie Murphy) whose life is turned into a soapy melodrama on the bingeing service Streamberry – Netflix in everything but name. (It even has the Netflix colour scheme and jingle.)

“Television” Joan is played by Salma Hayek. And she is here to tell the world how horrible her alter-ego really is, down to her plan to chat about her boring boyfriend with an unpredictable ex (Rob Delaney). Brooker clearly thinks he’s roasting Netflix, but it is more of a light flambéing. It has little of substance to say about what binge viewing is or isn’t doing to us.

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Far more satisfying is Loch Henry, an evisceration of our obsession with true crime. It features long-buried secrets, old friends reconnecting and a torture dungeon from the 1990s. Brooker points out how true crime commodifies suffering yet pulls this off without detracting from the fun. Smart, gory and silly, it’s Black Mirror firing on all pistons.

[ Charlie Brooker on hitting the reset button in the new Black Mirror series and ChatGPT ]

It’s just as well it’s so exciting, because it is followed by the downbeat Beyond the Sea. This is a 1960s-set tale of astronauts (Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett) on a deep-space mission. They cope with the isolation by beaming back to remote artificial bodies on Earth, where they live wholesome all-American lives with their wives. (Paul’s is played by Kate Mara.) It’s wistfully directed by the Cork film-maker John Crowley, the director of Brooklyn. And look out for Rory Culkin, of Clan Culkin, as a Charles Manson-style cult leader.

Black Mirror finishes with its two strongest episodes. Set in 2006, Mazey Day is about a troubled starlet (Clara Rugaard) who must run a daily gauntlet of paparazzi. Everything changes when an unfortunate encounter while filming in central Europe sends her into hiding.

The season closes with a punch in Demon 79. Filmed in the ghoulishly over-the-top style of a Hammer horror, it’s about a meek sales assistant (Anjana Vasan) who accidentally awakens a demon. The hellish charmer (Paapa Essiedu) sets her a mission: commit a series of unspeakable acts or watch the world burn.

It’s great fun – but with a sobering message. The 1970s setting allows Brooker to comment on rabble-rousing politicians attempting to capitalise on anti-immigrant sentiment. Demon 79 asks us to consider if attitudes towards outsiders have changed as much as we’d like to think. Forget AI or killer robots. This season on Black Mirror the true threat to the world is human wickedness.