It’s been over four years since Charlie Brooker’s acclaimed anthology series last graced our screens. To say expectations were high for Black Mirror Season 6 would be an understatement. Maybe that’s why the five episodes of Black Mirror that dropped on Netflix are more mediocre than groundbreaking. Not to say the anthology is bad per se, but it’s not as good as it once was.
Black Mirror Season 6 is five episodes long and features performances from the likes of Salma Hayek Pinault, Michael Cera, John Hannah, and Aaron Paul.
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Where can you watch Black Mirror Season 6 in the UAE?
Black Mirror Season 6 is now streaming on Netflix in the UAE. If you don’t have one, you can create an account to watch this movie and other shows on Netflix. Unfortunately, Netflix does not offer any free trials.
Black Mirror Season 6 review
- Beyond the Sea
- Demon 79
- Stellar performances from stars like
Salma Hayek, Aaron Paul and John Hannah - Variety in episode genre
- Mazey Day is a terrible episode
- Some mediocre entries
- Underwhelming
Five new Black Mirror episodes
Joan is Awful is the title of the show’s first episode. This Kafka-esque meta of a meta features Annie Murphy starring as the titular Joan, an average woman who finds herself in the centre of a new Streamberry (an obvious Netflix stand-in) drama about the most intimate details of herself with Salma Hayek starring as her. While the meta is overused here, this episode is the only one addressing deep fake and AI technology and reminds us to always read those terms and conditions nobody ever pays attention to.
Episode two, Loch Henry, stars Samuel Blenkin, Myha’la Herrold, and Daniel Portman and even features John Hannah in a small role. It’s a take on modern society’s obsession with true crime. While entertaining, it adds nothing meaningful, and the social commentary is clumsy at best.
Overall the episodes are a mixed bag, but arguably the best of the bunch is Beyond the Sea, the feature-length third entry starring Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett as two astronauts in the late 60s. In this version of reality, the two astronauts can have a continuous link to Earth during their six-year space mission with the help of robotic doubles.
The performances in this entry are outstanding, and the focus is on the emotional connection between these people and their loved ones rather than the technology itself. It also features Rory Culkin as a Charles Manson stand-in and has one of the most brutal endings of the series so far.
Probably the worst of the bunch is Mazey Day, starring Zazie Beetz as a 2006 morally conflicted paparazzi and Clara Rugaard as the starlet she’s chasing for a big payday. What made Black Mirror great was that small anchor into the “what if,” completely discarded here, and the result borders on ridiculous.
Demon 79 is the final instalment of the season and the first to lose any pretence of technophobia. We instead get a straightforward comedy horror starring Anjana Vasan as Needa, a mild-mannered shop assistant living as a woman of colour in the overt racism of Northern England’s late 1970s.
After enduring just enough thinly veiled insults, she accidentally summons a novice demon played by Paapa Essiedu. Now Needa must work with her new demon friend to try and stop the world from ending. All she has to do is find three people to murder.
Episode five is brilliantly done and could work as a stand-alone feature reminiscent of grainy 70s B horror. It has little to do with any of the themes Black Mirror accustomed us to, and the beginning credits label this as a Red Mirror production. Paapa Essiedu’s comedic performance as the demon dressed like the guy from Boney M is exhilarating, while Vasan carries the whole episode to perfection as she goes from shy and unassuming to a confident killer. And the 70s tunes are perfectly timed, adding to the B roll charm.
Reaching the end of the famed anthology’s five new episodes is bittersweet. A couple of great episodes are thrown in, but the overall feeling for Black Mirror Season 6 is mixed. That could, however, be just the all-too-high bar Charlie Brooker set for earlier instalments.
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