Charlie Brooker's BLACK MIRROR

More fucking Brooker crap.

has this run in the US? why because it sound interesting

first series was incredible

internet lets me down on s01 torr3nts

i take that back

it was on youtube for awhile (officially?)

Yeah, Brooker regularly Tweets YouTube links to his stuff on official YouTube channels.
I thought this first new film was pretty intense. The concept resonated for me - I wonder how much a viewer's investment in this story depends on whether someone close to them has... wait, has no one else seen this?

really crap episode. I do not know where to begin. the premise was brilliant but it was executed stupidly, it was taken wayyyyy too far to be sensible or reasonable (even in the story's own constructed reality), and 20 minutes of story was padded to 48. shithouse.

I didn't watch it, saw the preview, it looked like a 'good' episode of "Tales of the Unexpected".

Those eps were 30 mins.

first ep i've ever seen of this show.

yes it could have been better - it should have been far more difficult for her to reject the clone, for instance, in the flesh he actually wasn't compelling or even realistic - but i have a looooooooot of time for modern twilight zone episodes shot with moody lighting

i loved all the little tech bits as well, c'mon that's how you do it

where did her nosy friend end up? why weren't those things deployed en masse as aids for the elderly/disabled, sex toys, butlers &c.? too many dumb holes.

why weren't those things deployed en masse as aids for the elderly/disabled, sex toys, butlers &c.

they probably were! this was a story about one (presumably loaded) woman living in a big ol' country house.

first 20 minutes definitely the strongest - i loved how basically everything spoke to the sorts of knowledge we have that's surprising, or unpublic, how hard it is to really know someone. and yet... honestly if they'd just stuck to the chat format i bet she would have kept talking to "it" for years

http://liveson.org/

genuinely surprised at how short this thread is! this ep seems like it's right in ilx's wheelhouse

I liked the first series with reservations, but I loved this. Very much a modern-day Monkey's Paw or similar. I think keeping it low-key and emotions-based worked really well.

AA - seriously, do you actually care about those things? They're not even plot-holes: if you tried to answer them then your film would be incredibly dull.

all of those things (and more—I didn't get to all the other wtf moments) completely got in the way for me

I dunno, I guess we just have completely different psychology. I mean, I didn't need them explaining because they seemed fairly self-explanatory. But let's have a go:

"Nosy friend" - if she's turning the phone off to her sister, why would she be chatting on the reg to someone who it is made fairly obvious she isn't that close to? The scene at the funeral was fairly obviously between people who weren't close. And she has her dead husband bot to talk to.

"why weren't they deployed en masse?" - Tracer's OTM that these things obviously are around... she's affluent and tech-savvy enough to be an early adopter, so it's still a bit embarrassing, especially because of the emotional aspect (hence why she doesn't tell her sister or the moving men), but that doesn't mean that she's the only special snowflake who has one. The story doesn't involve other people aside from her immediate social circle, WHY ON EARTH would it suddenly break into a story about everyone else's android husband? And as for the implication that they could be used for good: a) at the very start there is a bit on the news about the technology being used for good, and b) since when do private corporations even care about doing good?

I liked at the end it was basically Pop-pop gets a treat?

Agree with AA to an extent, it was a massive jump to reveal at the end that they live in a world where extreme tech exists that would have altered society completely. You don't invent something that advanced overnight. It made the point it was trying to make though, I guess.

http://www.recordsale.de/cdpix/s/steve_winwood-roll_with_it(3).jpg

seems like brooker's been reading some kurzweil

Hadn't seen any of these before, wasn't expecting it to be quite so low-key and melancholic. Thought it was a good way of talking/thinking about loss, what constitutes a person, the way we love and remember others - reminded me a bit of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The ending was pretty close to perfect - very creepy, very sad - and i liked the slow pacing throughout.

it was a massive jump to reveal at the end that they live in a world where extreme tech exists that would have altered society completely. You don't invent something that advanced overnight.

Wut? How are you reading this as a 'big reveal' at the end? What are you talking about?

Is this series better than the last one? I thought S1 had some nice ideas, and I applaud the intent, but it was really clunky and 6th form in its implementation.

It wasn't played as a big reveal or anything, that's not what I meant. It's just setting the scene very late that it was set in a world that would have adapted to having clones to some extent so it's hard to gauge her reaction or concept of him compared to if something like that was parachuted in to our world

dude, they established that there were science-fictional medical type advances in literally the first minute of the episode (on the tv playing in the car)! it didn't set the scene very late at all

Submitted post too early but i'm trying to type on my phone and it's hard to get my point across so I'll stop now

Xp right but a world with actual clones, rules about them, attitudes would be a lot more different than just havingfancy coffee cups and thinner phones

It did remind me of Never let me go too, where the social reaction to such thing was a big part of the world he wrote

attitudes would be a lot more different than just havingfancy coffee cups and thinner phones

This is a massive part of the whole 'Black Mirror' concept, though. That actually things aren't so very different, that human beings carry on being human beings through all sorts of radical change. Hell, it's a large part of a lot of science fiction.

emil.y:

re nosy friend: there's no consequence for her. she's the one who lays the groundwork for the plot, and once that's underway she just vanishes, despite the fact that she fucked up this woman's life to an enormous degree. but in modern day storytelling she needs to be around to react, or to be affected in some way. she's the most obvious kind of loose end.

re world of clones: kinder's point is otm—it's a stretch (although not entirely unlikely) that robot clones suddenly exist because facebook invented them, and that the first round off the line is virtually indistinguishable from humans. the leap from a robotic voice on the phone to a self-healing robotic person requires an enormous suspension of disbelief.

also, when robot man is still just a phone voice and he tells her how to prepare the realdoll, but he disappears into static. what the hell? they couldn't have staged that better? there are people watching who have never experienced phone voices disappearing into static on the phone (it's an analogue cell thing), and because he's being deleted or migrated or whatever, it's even less plausible. also, why did that happen at all? why couldn't robot man have just finished his sentence? also (and this is my biggest problem here), he was warning her that she must do something to prepare the realdoll, but she never heard what it was, and again (just like nosy friend) there was no consequence. so why do it? this episode was littered with bombs that never went off.

Charlie Brooker's FUCK OFF

despite the fact that she fucked up this woman's life to an enormous degree

Well, actually, she didn't. And that too is the point. It's not like (spoilers) this is the technology misbehaving, or rebelling, or taking over the world. It's about grief. The central character's life ISN'T fucked up by the android, it's fucked up by her husband dying. And actually, the nosy friend's advice was helpful for a while, it was the main character's decision to push further that was the wrong decision.

in modern day storytelling she needs to be around to react, or to be affected in some way

Uh, why? This would be completely pointless and irrelevant to the story that's being told.

robot clones suddenly exist because facebook invented them

What?

the first round off the line is virtually indistinguishable from humans

I will give you that it's a relatively quick transition, but it's not meant to be set in the present day and then they suddenly appear magically. It's already the future when it starts. I actually thought the news report at the beginning was fairly heavy-handed foreshadowing, but clearly you and kinder both completely missed the set-ups here.

when robot man is still just a phone voice and he tells her how to prepare the realdoll, but he disappears into static

Okay, I'll give you this: there is no _practical_ reason for this to happen. Even though we're told it's still in beta, you'd think that they'd set up the data migration in a way that instructions could be given at the correct time. However, it fits the arc - the husband disappears suddenly, the first ripple also disappears suddenly, and gives way to a hollower echo. It's the narrative of grief, again.

this episode was littered with bombs that never went off.

It wasn't meant to be about bombs going off. It was a quiet reflection on grief and desire and 'you should be careful what you wish for', it wasn't a dystopian futureworld of killer robots.

Seriously, I have no problem with you guys not liking it or it not resonating with you or whatever, but a lot of your 'holes' simply aren't holes.

the leap from a robotic voice on the phone to a self-healing robotic person requires an enormous suspension of disbelief.

It's science fiction! Stories about spaceships require an enormous suspension of disbelief! And it was almost all borderline semi-plausible not too distant future tech. Main problem I had was that although the point of the story is that it wasn't an actual artificial intelligence, I don't think you could get even that level of interaction without genuine AI, but I was willing to give that a pass. Yeah I found this pretty moving, extremely well done in terms of the human details, and seriously when can I get one of those giant L shaped touch screen desktops?

Also anyone complaining this was over stretched and implausible has clearly never seen spielberg's AI.

Well, actually, she didn't.

debatable imo. rather than allow her friend to go through the normal grieving process, she actively harassed her into avoiding it. nosy friend changed her whole life for the worse.

Uh, why? This would be completely pointless and irrelevant to the story that's being told.

so why is she there at all? the widow could have reached that point all by herself (i.e. discovering the zombie social network), but brooker chose to drop in a character to enforce that plot device; that character, then, needs to factor into a later part of the story, especially when her influence leads directly to the devastating final scene. i can't imagine what 2001 would have been like if the monolith had just stopped being in it from the halfway mark.

What?

that's what we're asked to accept. i had already suspended a fair whack of disbelief by that point, but that leap was so enormous that i was really struggling to stay with the core theme from then on.

I actually thought the news report at the beginning was fairly heavy-handed foreshadowing, but clearly you and kinder both completely missed the set-ups here.

i did miss/forget that, yeah, but to be fair that's the sort of thing a storyteller might throw in at the last minute to check a box. by the time the realdoll stuff kicked in, i doubt many viewers remembered that five-second news grab.

It wasn't meant to be about bombs going off. It was a quiet reflection on grief and desire and 'you should be careful what you wish for', it wasn't a dystopian futureworld of killer robots.

i understand your point completely, so it's with extra emphasis that i make the point that those deviations shouldn't have been there in the first place. the only reason i can come up with is that brooker had 48 minutes to fill. this was a twilight zone-length story at best.

It's science fiction! Stories about spaceships require an enormous suspension of disbelief!

this wasn't on a spaceship, it was set on earth in the near future. i myself have made excuses for plenty of science fiction because it's set in a crazy anything-could-happen speculative universe, but this wasn't.

Why wasn't it? If you don't buy my "this is all semi-plausible tech" line (fair enough tbh) it still works as an alternate universe "what if" story. What if we did have Facebook robot clones?

a lot of 16 year-old boys wd be getting laid on the reg?

Why wasn't it? If you don't buy my "this is all semi-plausible tech" line (fair enough tbh) it still works as an alternate universe "what if" story.

self-healing robots? really? i mean maybe there was a roadside billboard that said 'HAPPY NEW NANOMILLENNIUM CITIZENS OF JUPITER' at some point

last year's story about the bloke earning credits on the bike could well have been set so distantly in space/time that pretty much anything is excusable, but we're talking about people dressing like they do now, being in buildings that look like they do now, driving cars that look like they do now &c. no way was this the great chinese kingdom of wales in 2168 or whatever.

Ok there are plenty of details that make this seem like a plausible near future world (slightly sexier phones and desktops) but that doesn't mean it's an actual possible world. It's an SF fairy story. SF can be good without being 100% technologically plausible.

also i don't understand why they have the technology to build near-perfect humanoid robots that self-heal, and yet they post her a dormant android covered in vaseline and she has to tip powder into the bath like it's a sea monkey

Ok there are plenty of details that make this seem like a plausible near future world (slightly sexier phones and desktops) but that doesn't mean it's an actual possible world. It's an SF fairy story. SF can be good without being 100% technologically plausible.

when the plausibility is unprecedented by anything else in the story, it gets in the way. emil.y mentioned that news clip right at the start, which was fairly obviously chucked in during post production, and which i and (presumably) kinder didn't even notice. that's not enough. maybe, i dunno, the protagonists could have had a chat about 'those creepy robots', or a proto-humanoid could have served vol-au-vents at the funeral or something.

I guess my problem is that I don't see why your suggestions make *anything* more plausible. They just clutter up a story with rubbish to hammer home a point. I mean, it is far more plausible to me that the nosy friend is never heard of again, because they weren't close in the first place and that's what happens when you're grieving, but you would relinquish plausibility in this case for plot device to make sure that everything is tied up neatly. Guess what? Life isn't tied up neatly. It's not plausible for all the loose ends to be tied.

And, you know, *why* is it more plausible to have a robot butler be the first instantiation rather than medical uses followed by a weirdo start-up company that preys on grief? I'm not at all sure that it is.

(Also, I assume you were eliding/joking with your interpretation that 'facebook invented it', right? It utilises data from all digital interactions and records in a future where even more interactions are online than they are now, it isn't just 'I have made you out of facebook'.)

It's an SF fairy story. SF can be good without being 100% technologically plausible.

yeah, you basically have to give them this and then judge everything else on its own merits. It's not like it's particularly likely that someone would survive a nuclear apocalypse by being trapped in a a bank vault etc. etc.

(I'm going to stop now... these arguments in a nutshell boil down to 'your plausibility isn't the same as mine', and it's impossible to go anywhere from there.)

The twist was, you'd never expect that twist because they've done that twist so many times before, but -- twist! -- they did it again

thought I had Beyond the Sea predicted until the green light appeared on the hatch door, then I realized what David had actually done.

found it an effective episode dealing with loss, PTSD, and the unhealthy ways pain can manifest itself when society deprives citizens of outlets for processing trauma

what about Cate Blanchett?

FUCK HER!

What I thought odd about E3 was that after watching his family get brutally murdered - they just expected him to stew up there by himself without much (any?) support and keep working like it never happened.

And maybe I’m just juvenile but I thought Joan is Awful was great.

Joan was good and fun imo

I’m partway through episode 3 and I’m teetering on the edge hoping and hating that this is going to take the obvious turn but Brooker is good at subverting expectations in a way parallel to the first guess at the plot

Yeah re ep3 I was like "where is NASA or whoever's support here?!"

Isn't it set in an alternative 1969 though - back in the dark ages in terms of psychological support etc...

Joan is Awful wasn't terrible (though some have said it was 'shitty', yuk yuk), but the big reveal was pretty lame because it's just been done sooooo many times before and as a result, completely eliminated the stakes that previously existed in the episode

i really enjoyed it - i was just thinking '"oh it's gone a bit conventional, where is the multiverse shenanigans we glimpsed with cate blanchett" when the big reveal came. I know that kind of twist is his stock-in-trade but a) i didn't watch series 4 or 5 at all and ii) that shit is catnip to me and I will never tire of it.

I’ve never watched a Black Mirror should I watch this ‘Loch Henry’? Is there any reason to start from the beginning or whatever?

I think there's a throwaway reference to Loch Henry appearing in the Streamberry lineup of Episode 1, but all the episodes are standalone.
First and last episodes are the most fun, I'd say.

The setting in the astronaut episode is weird. Is it supposed to be alternate 60s/70s where we have replicants and space brain beaming but no cellphones or ebook readers? There were hippies, too?

yeah, though the hippies were the least hippie-like people I'd ever seen, they were pretty much an allegory for an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group. not chill at all.

xp were they not a straight up allusion to the Manson family

Yeah they were

lol I knew cult leader guy was a Culkin but couldn't tell which one.

Rory Culkin!

between this role and Euronymous of Mayhem he's got to play a wide range of sons of bitches

definitely didn't peg there being a werewolf episode

lots of my friends are into pegging werewolves

Fuck. This is why I don't watch things like Black Mirror, I think.

If y'all are gonna be watching this show, I feel like it's probably OK to talk about... why I can't watch these shows, or any shows, really.

I was watching _Boyhood_, some years back, because it seemed like an interesting concept, and it was. I'm drawn to the past but I haven't always known why. And then I get to the point where the boy and his mom have to flee an abusive relationship, and I had to stop watching. I didn't know why at the time.

Years later I thought about it again and this time I understood. I was one of the kids left behind. My dad left my mom because she was horribly abusive, tremendously abusive, to him and to us. But he couldn't take us. Because he couldn't take care of us. He knew it. We knew it. My mom knew it, because every time we objected to one of her abuses she'd acidly say that if we didn't like it, maybe we could go live with our _father_.

But I'm curious about things, I read about them, because it's easier than experiencing them firsthand.

Brooker wrote the episode as a reaction to COVID-19 lockdowns in the U.K. during that period. He saw it as an episode about working from home. Hartnett said that a person's soul will "atrophy" if "love and connection" are taken from them, as in David's case. Mara saw that David, Cliff and Lana all experienced isolation.

I know about cabin fever. I know what it does to people. I know what it did to me. Everybody complained about people who didn't comply with "social isolation" as if it was trivial, as if it was a petty thing, and I'm sitting here for years watching the woman I love slowly turn into a monster, become isolated and paranoid and cruel.

I'm supposed to be the crazy one. That's my job. That's always been my job. All my life, though, all my life, the people around me have been trying to steal my job, they do it better and more thoroughly than I ever could. How am I supposed to have low self esteem when all the people I trust turn out to be worse than me? My mom, my childhood best friend, my ex-wife, the other server mods. They all wanted me to be The Crazy One but they can't do that and then do shit that's worse than anything I would ever dream of. It's not _fair_.

And then what she did to me when I tried to leave was...

I don't watch psychological horror because it's too much like my fucking life.

mk2 really really hated the werewolf one.
which is unlike him as he is quite mild mannered.
i thought it was ok until the reveal at which point its 'ooh, right, got it now',
but mk2 was genuinely 'worst episode ever'.
spotted the whole loch henry twist way too early, so expected the video footage.
guess i have watched too many b-movie/psycho horror films.

that said, we both loved the 'beyond the sea', 'demon 79', and 'joan is awful' episodes.
the whole look of the dept store in 'demon 79' was a massive throwback for me.
used to go to a shop in the 70s/early 80s in Skipton calle Rackhams, that looked exactly like that.

initially when they found a video cassette and said "let's see what's on it", that's when I expected some kind of big reveal. when it didn't come, I suspected there was someone else involved besides Iain but figured it might be bartender son.

I did spend half the episode thinking of gibberish words to throw off my own brain from trying to figure it out though because these days I figure out almost every twist early even if I'm not trying and I don't wanna spoil my own fun.

also, re 'beyond the sea' : re the earlier comment about no comms between NASA and the ship.
i took this as a case of they had figured out how to make the necessary link between the ship and their replicas,
but there was no option for audio/visual communication given the early days tech.

also took it to be reflective of some form of neglect on NASA's end. feel like Cliff made some comment suggesting they felt abandoned up there at one point.

I’ve never watched a Black Mirror should I watch this ‘Loch Henry’? Is there any reason to start from the beginning or whatever?

xxp that's got to be wrong because at one point there's a black and white screen showing live footage of the funeral

I'm only a few in, but much of this recent batch seem like commentary, and in the case of the first episode direct commentary, on the content prevalent on streaming services.

Loch Henry is "what if streaming services, but you sickos keep watching true crime stuff and maybe you're bad"

Most episodes of the show are commentary on something. I really despise true crime content creators and audiences so I definitely appreciated it.

Two of may favs not already listed by gyac:
- White Bear
- Hated in the Nation

Oh I actually love Hated in the Nation as well, good shout, I’d watch Kelly Macdonald in anything so I can overlook the MESSAGE aspect of this. White Bear is good but it’s not a favourite because it’s too on the nose.

I suspect most of us have "The National Anthem" as one of our least favorites.

I liked White Christmas a lot, even though it's probably one of the bleakest in the franchise.

Metalhead was a fantastic SF action horror episode imo

I don't think starting with San Junipero is a good idea, it will give you a false reassurance compared to how bleak/brutal some of the rest is!

Demon 79 was fun - and I thought the set design was fantastic. Decent music cues, colouring, furniture/TVs were all drably on point.

Yeah I didn’t recommend that.

Yeah I missed yr "in no order" ha sorry.

I have to say the use of Bright Eyes was triggering!

Took an edible, getting ready for Demon 79

Demon 79 is a banger

Aw man that's the last one?

Boo

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I was chatting on my android smartphone and mentioned in conversation that my lawnmower was knackered and within days I was getting lawnmower ad spam. I'm almost sure I didn't browse any lawnmowers before this occurred, but lol maybe I did and forgot about it. But I still wouldn't be surprised if this is already happening to some extent. Like a corporate AI program snooping through millions of hours of private convos at 1000 times speed, fishing for key words.

People talked about Facebook doing shit like that maybe 10 years and I wouldn’t put ANYTHING past them

even with microphone access denied THEY KNOW

I looked up using an expired passport to get back into the UK, and same day got a text from HM Passport about passport renewal. I have never before had a text from them and haven't since, and generally try to keep cookies etc locked down so I was/am a bit freaked out

a Polish/UK expat currently living in Germany I know who is a friend of my brother was convinced lots of hassle he was getting from HMRC coincided with him opening a FB account with his government name. But this was in the early days of FB and was a big influence on me never getting a FB account.

lol, apart from being an asocial fuckup!

I’m not saying our phones are definitely listening in on us, but I get a lot of ads for ways to stop snoring

My Alexa barely responds even when I say the "Alexa" prompt, so I doubt mine is paying any attention to my every day mutterings.