The best Black Mirror episodes offer up a horror anthology series based more on the fears of technology than on monsters, ghouls, and post-apocalyptic landscapes. While it owes a lot to shows that came before, like The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, this series is about computers, sci-fi advances, and speculative dystopian storylines. At the same time, it also followed The Twilight Zone’s emphasis on taking these fears and using them to shine a light on current social issues.
Black Mirror found ways to take the idea of technology and present cautionary takes of going too far and not taking into consideration that people lose their humanity the further they delve into tech. This series has presented everything from dystopian futures and space exploration to artificial intelligence, with some of the biggest names in Hollywood taking on roles in intelligent and often devastating tales of horror.
10 Nosedive
Season 3, Episode 1
Bryce Dallas Howard stars in the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” This takes place in a dystopian society where everyone lives on a social credit system. This is based on how other people rate each other on a smartphone, using a scale from one to five. The higher a person’s rating, the better they are treated. It is a huge damnation of social status in today’s real world based on social media, but it is taken into the real world.
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Lacie (Howard) wants to raise her status to a 4.5 or higher to gain access to live in a gated community reserved for only the higher rated people. When an old high school friend asks her to be the maid of honor at her wedding, Lacie realizes this is a chance to move up. However, on her way there, her ratings start to nosedive, and she loses all her rights in society until she finally has nothing left. The episode is a very smart one that shows how society would look if run by “influencers” rather than real human interaction.
9 Fifteen Million Merits
Season 1, Episode 2
Only the second overall episode of the Black Mirror series before making its way to Netflix. “Fifteen Million Merits” is set in a dystopian future where people have to cycle on exercise bikes so they can earn currency known as “merits.” Daniel Kalluuya stars as Bing, a man who meets a woman named Abi (Jessica Brown Findlay) and convinces her she can participate in a talent show and become famous.
At the same time, the episode has the talent show (Hot Shot), and most people live in cubes cycling for merits while watching this show as their only form of entertainment. Here, content creators get better living conditions, but this is a mysterious episode that never reveals why they live in these conditions. FIfteen Million Mertis is an allegory for working 9-to-5 jobs to barely make ends meet, while other people can just get lucky with the talent show and move ahead of the non-stop workers in society.
8 White Bear
Season 2, Episode 2
“White Bear” is an intense Black Mirror episode that sets up its story as a big mystery from the start. A woman, (played by Lenora Crichlow) wakes up and doesn’t know her name or where she is. Things quickly escalate as a masked man with a gun shows up and starts shooting at her and she has to go on the run while countless people follow along with their mobile phones, recording the chase.
If anything, it shows how
Black Mirror
can drift into pure horror.
This all leads to a massive twist at the end, where the woman finally learns who she is, what is happening to her, and, more horrifically, the fact that it will never end. The episode goes a long way to show a future for the justice system and how people who commit terrible crimes could be punished in ways that are almost as inhumane as the original crimes the person committed. If anything, it shows how Black Mirror can drift into pure horror.
7 White Christmas
Special Episode
“White Christmas” was a special episode set outside of the regular Black Mirror seasons. Jon Hamm (Mad Men) stars in the series as Matt, who is at a remote cabin on Christmas and shares three stories with Joe (Rafe Spall). The three stories then play out as a small anthology episode, with a spotlight on the holiday season. The first has a man seducing women at a Christmas party, the second has Matt training digital clones of people, and the third has Joe obsessed over a failed relationship.
The big twist comes at the end when it shows that Matt and Joe are not where they appear, and the entire setup and stories that they tell are part of a plan to force out the truth of a violent crime. This installment has an even darker tone than many other Black Mirror episodes, and placing it during the Christmas season makes it even more disturbing, especially when the truth in the final story reveals what is really going on. This was the last Black Mirror episode before its move to Netflix.
6 Be Right Back
Season 2, Episode 1
The season 2 Black Mirror premiere stars Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter) as a woman named Martha, struggling with grief after her boyfriend Ash (Domhnall Gleeson) suddenly dies. However, as a sci-fi story, she learns she can use a service that lets her use artificial intelligence to create a new version of Ash based on his online history and their past messages to each other. The AI creation becomes almost indistinguishable from the real Ash.
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This episode goes into what it means to be a real person and if someone can just replace a lost loved one with a carbon copy using AI. While this is strikingly poignant in today’s society concerning fear of AI, there is a lot more to this episode than those fears. This is about grief and the lengths a person would go to in order to fill what is missing in their lives. Atwell delivers a great performance of Atwell, who still never finds it with the new Ash.
5 The Entire History Of You
Season 1, Episode 3
“The Entire History of You” is the only Black Mirror episode that Charlie Brooker didn’t have a role in writing. However, written by Jesse Armstrong (Succession), it still remains one of the best episodes of the entire series. In this first season outing, a grain implant is created that allows people to record every single memory in their life. While this seems like a good thing, it turns out that keeping all memories – good and bad – can lead to disaster.
The main theme is the idea that it is often best to let things go rather than hold onto every memory a person experiences in life.
The main story follows a lawyer named Liam (Toby Kebbell), who is at dinner with his wife and one of her friends. When he suspects they might have had a previous relationship or affair, he goes through his own memory catalog, trying to find proof of infidelity. The main theme is the idea that it is often best to let things go rather than hold onto every memory a person experiences in life. This Black Mirror episode had much less satire than others and remains a dark and difficult watch.
4 The National Anthem
Season 1, Episode 1
It was clear from the start that Black Mirror was going to be something special. The very first episode remains one of the best in the show’s run with “The National Anthem.” What really sets this apart is that it goes all in during the first episode and lets viewers know that this series is not pulling punches concerning shock value, horrifying moments, and a brilliant tendency to target difficult social issues without holding anything back.
The synopsis was simple enough and just hearing it wouldn’t let people know how important the themes here really are. The simple idea is that the British Prime Minister (Rory Kinnear) is forced to have sex with a pig on live television after a member of the British royal family is kidnapped. The themes here include how social media spreads information, the public’s relationship with the government, and the role of news media is reporting current events. The episode received high praise with critics claiming everything that happened seemed plausible no matter how bizarre it became.
3 Hang The DJ
Season 4, Episode 4
For fans who feel that too many Black Mirror episodes end on downer endings, “Hang the DJ” is one of the rare installments of the series that has a slightly hopeful ending. The story takes place in a world where a dating system predicts to the minute how long any relationship will last. The main characters are Frank (Joe Cole) and Amy (Georgina Campbell), who meet and then learn from the system that their relationship won’t even last through that night.
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The episode then has them go through other, less satisfying relationships, all while wondering what could have happened if they had given each other a chance. The entire theme is showing that no system is perfect when it comes to predicting people’s feelings and love, and by the end, when Frank and Amy decide to give it a chance anyway, it shows that anyone could overcome the system. Of course, there is one more twist that turns even that on its head.
2 USS Callister
Season 4, Episode 1
One of the most popular Black Mirror episodes of its entire run was its take on a Star Trek styled sci-fi episode. The episode ended up as a pitch perfect spoof of Star Trek, with Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad) starring as the heroic Captain Robert Daly of the USS Callister. However, the big twist in this episode is that this isn’t a real space opera adventure but is instead a simulation where Robert is a disgruntled employee at a video game company.
Unlike many
Black Mirror
episodes, this one has a lot of comedy and some quality special effects.
He uses digital clones of co-workers to belittle them and seduce a new employee. However, when he invites her into the game, she convinces the crew to rebel against Robert and the villain in this episode gets what’s coming to him. Unlike many Black Mirror episodes, this one has a lot of comedy and some quality special effects. Critics praised the Black Mirror allusions to Star Trek storylines in the course of the episode and it won four Primetime Emmy Awards.
1 San Junipero
Season 3, Episode 4
The most popular Black Mirror episode of all time and also its best. In this season 3 episode, “San Junipero,” the normally dark and demented anthology series proves that sometimes a happy ending is what audiences really want to see. “San Junipero” takes viewers back to the 1980s and the colors and excess of that decade for a story about what happens when people face death and move on in life.
While that doesn’t seem like a “happy ending” situation, this story follows Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) as two women who meet and connect in a 1980s nightclub and realize they have great chemistry. However, they are actually inside a simulated reality for elderly people and those who have died, living out their dreams of being young and free. They decide if they will live together in San Junipero or die naturally in what is a Black Mirror masterpiece.