Black Mirror Reviews - Charlie Brooker Series So Compelling, Robert Downey Jr's Snapped It Up

Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror has always been an unflinching sideways look at the way us humans conduct our lives. So where has Brooker - the perennial grump – taken us this time? And more importantly, is it any good?

Well, the answer is an unassailable: yes. It’s good. The Guardian –where Brooker spouts most of his paid disdain – says, “This Black Mirror feels less like the usual Brookerian nightmarish video game dystopia, and more like 2019. It's also less satirical and acerbic than some of his previous television; not just a technology-obsessed sarcastic underwhelmist's bleak view of the future. The Independent’s review, and don’t read it if you haven’t seen it as it’s basically just a blow by blow of the plot, praise the show as well as an evolution of Brooker’s writing style. “It won't have come as a great surprise to any viewer either that this was a futuristic version of "The Monkey's Paw", that terrible short story about the dangers of getting what you wish for,” goes the review. “Oddly, though, it was a tender, more wistful account of the fable, neither of those adjectives you would have associated with Charlie Brooker even a few years ago.”

Black Mirror has been so popular that Robert Downey Jr decided to option an earlier episode with a view to morphing it into a science-fiction thriller in Hollywood. The Entire History of You – the episode in question, which first aired in 2011 – was actually written by Peep Show writer, Jesse Armstrong, though.