The Future Is Now (Review: Black Mirror & Utopia)
I had planned on writing reviews of both Black Mirror and Utopia separately but I can’t help thinking about one when I think of the other. Two British, dark, dystopian series running concurrently with surely a very similar audience.
On paper Black Mirror covers areas that appeal to me more than Utopia – pop culture, media hysteria, and in particular, Brooker’s obsession with the frisson point between technology and human emotion. Utopia on the other hand sounds at it’s base level like a classic paranoid conspiracy theory. Even the titles would have me gravitating towards Black Mirror first – suggesting it’s as much about who we *are* as who we might become.
And yet Utopia succeeded in almost every way that Black Mirror has near-consistently failed me.
I’m not sure that the issue with Black Mirror lies entirely in the writing – the thing it is sold on – as the uneven execution. The drastic difference in stylistic tempos from episode to episode (and director to director) really is it biggest weakness for me. While ‘The Entire History of You’ (the absolute standout episode of the series for me, and in fairness probably good enough to justify the rest of the episodes on it own), ‘National Anthem’ and ‘Be Right Back’ were all directed with a sure, mature hand ‘White Bear’ and ’15 Million Merits’ were both so cheap looking and broadly directed that they felt more like slightly off cbeebies shows than anything being broadcast on late night Channel 4.
That said some of the ideas felt so slight and barely fleshed out (National Anthem surely was not much more than a good Brass Eye sketch?) that they buckled under the weight of the 45 minutes running time.
None of this would bother me if I didn’t think there was something there. Black Mirror is, or at least should be, exactly the kind of show we need to be producing more of in the UK and it’s frustrating to see it fall short of the mark.
Thankfully this frustration has been greatly salved by Utopia dropping it’s grinning yellow bag of death next to our feet.
What can I say without sounding like a fawning idiot?
Brutal, beautifully filmed and perfectly cast it’s everything I could have hoped for from it, and a little bit more. If I have any criticism it’s that I had hoped for a clean one series and out ending (it was obviously well plotted through a proper story arc so it was definitely possible) and instead it left me feeling a little cheated in the final moments. However, that’s a small price to pay for the series that preceded it.
I won’t say much more in this review because it’s exactly the kind of show that will be spoiled by knowing too much about it so I’l just round off by urging you to catch up with it on 4OD if you haven’t seen it yet.
Black Mirror:
The National Anthem – 6/10
15 Million Merits – 2/10
The Entire History of You – 10/10
Be Right Back – 5/10
White Bear – 3/10
The Waldo Moment – 4/10
–
Overall: 6/10
Utopia:
Overall: 9/10
All words by Susan Sloan.