The first of the new Black Mirror films, Be Right Back, stars Hayley Atwell as Martha and Domhnall Gleeson as a social media addict named Ash. Set in the near future it is, in tone, closer to the third episode of the previous series, looking how technology affects relationships – and how relationships could affect technology. And no nasty business with a pig to scare away the Daily Mail. The man finds himself distracted by social networking to the mild annoyance of the woman. She is no Luddite, her wooden easel with its curved touch screen is a valuable tool, as is the safedrive option on the car, but there is a time and place and Ash is tapping away on his phone just a bit too much. Martha doesn’t really mind though, she loves him and thoughts of their new life together are enough to override the nagging sensation that she might be losing him.
Then, after the young couple have just move to their remote cottage idyll, she really does lose him, in a very terminal fashion, when Ash is killed returning the hired van. At the funeral, Martha’s friend Sarah (Sinead Matthews) tells her about a new way to stay in touch with the deceased and reveals that, by using all his previous online communications, status updates and the like, Martha could create a new, alarmingly ‘real’ Ash to help alleviate her grief. Martha is disgusted by the concept and wants nothing to do with it as she decides to stay in the cottage, despite her sister, Naomi (Claire Keelen), being worried about her isolation.
Then one morning Martha receives an email from 'Ash'. Sarah has signed her up. Martha is furious and deletes the message but then discovers she is pregnant and, in a confused and lonely state, decides to talk to 'him'. Invariably, what she has discovered is a service that will replicate him as an instant messenger, based on his public social messaging record. Paying more for his private messaging to be taken into account. Then all his videos and recordings to create an audio version of him. And then, the final step, to physicality… "Martha knows the well-named Ash is dead, and this replacement is fake", notes Richard Johnston, who went to the BFI of this first episode. "But she can’t resist the temptation to treat him as if he were her one true love restored from the grave. But it’s not him, it is the social networking him, the public – and private face – that he exhibited, There is no room for surprise, there is no room for the revelations that were only ever made face to face. And things have to come to a head."
Of course, there are many ways to handle grief. "It is not uncommon at all for people to create some kind of surrogate form to comfort them, in a variety of ways," writes Johnston. "I’ve come across these 'real life' dolls, it is very common to talk to the deceased person as if they are still there. And for them to answer back. As the Q&A has pointed out people have often gone to mediums as part of their way of coping, all this is, is a different… medium. The first part of this show, at least, will happen in the short term. Are we as a society ready for it? And the more that we live out lives virtually, instead of physically, the more there will be to replace us when we are gone. Already Facebook pages have become shrines to their past owners, at what point will they start to talk back to us?"
Next up in the series is The Waldo Moment, about a failed comedian who voices a blue bear on a children’s educational show that teaches youngsters about reality by interviewing politicians and establishment figures. Daniel Rigby stars as bitter comic Jamie Salter, the voice behind Waldo the bear who, far from being a cute mascot for a kids’ show, is actually a character on a late-night topical comedy programme that delights in ridiculing its unknowing interviewees. The bear proves popular enough for the channel to give him his own pilot and the production company, which is run by Jason Flemyng as a character named Jack Napier, comes up with the idea of having Waldo stand against one of his victims, Conservative Liam Monroe (Tobias Menzies), who has been parachuted in to win a safe Tory seat in an up-and-coming By-Election.
On the campaign trail Jamie meets and falls for Gwendolyn Harris (Chloe Pirrie), the Labour candidate who is a rising star in the Labour party. When Gwendolyn backs away, warned off Jamie by her campaign manager, Jamie struggles to contain his disdain for career politicians. At a 'Meet the Politicians’ election hustings, when taunted by Monroe, Jamie lashes out at all the politicians present and accuses them of being more artificial than Waldo. The clip seems to hit a nerve with a disengaged mistrusting public; his rant proving something of a YouTube hit, and generating a lot of commentary in the newspapers about the state of modern politics. Could the blue bear actually end up winning a By-Election?… Or is there even more to play for?
The last film in this series of Black Mirror will be White Bear (which, despite the title, has nothing to do with The Waldo Moment). It stars Being Human’s Lenora Crichlow as a woman called Toni who wakes up suffering from amnesia in a house she doesn’t know. There are photos of her with a man and another photo of a young girl on the mantelpiece – neither of whom she recognises. The TV is on and is playing a symbol that means nothing to her. Confused, she leaves the house and stumbles onto a deserted street where no-one answers their doors. She finally senses some movement behind a curtain and is surprised to see a man filming her on his smartphone.
A car pulls into the road and a man gets out (Michael Smiley). Toni starts to approach him until she sees he is a carrying a gun and pointing it at her. As she flees, she’s pursued by a mob of people from their houses who run out of their houses to film her. Running round the corner she stumbles into Damien (Ian Bonar) and Jem (Tuppence Middleton), who together with Toni seek refuge in a petrol station. The man with the gun tries to break his way in. A group of people have gathered outside and are filming this on their phones. As the glass shatters the man with the gun enters the petrol station and Damian tries to grapple with him. The girls make a run for it. They see Damien try to escape but he is shot and dies. Toni and Jem manage to escape.
Jem explains to Toni that this has been going on for months – a mysterious signal started being transmitted that has caused most of the population to become mindless voyeurs. This apathy has allowed those strong enough to resist the signal's influence to do what they want and they have essentially become what Jem calls "Hunters" – out to get people like her and Toni. During Jem’s explanation, Toni is plagued by various flashbacks – they are becoming more and more regular and involve her in a car with the man and the girl, her assumed daughter, from the photos. Jem and Toni set out to find and destroy the transmitter, to stop its signal. It is their only hope of finding a safe way out. Reaching the transmitter they try to set fire to it just as the "hunters" arrive. Will they manage it and is this the end of their torment?
"Black Mirror is hard science fiction given a softly softly media face, it is about big problematic ideas about the way we live, given fleshy form," concludes Johnston. "Tonally, it also fits in rather well with Channel 4′s current series Utopia, full of twists, technology, just out of our reach but oh so believeable. However, the first episode- at least- of the second series of Black Mirror does not seek to shock as the first series did. This is a very mainstream, middle class, emotional drama approach which may well welcome in a wider audience before hitting them with some very difficult ideas indeed. Black Mirror asks lots of questions. It doesn’t really give anything close to a satisfying answer. That’s what mirrors do, reflect our questions back at ourselves. Answers, I guess is for us to come up with."
The first series of Black Mirror, broadcast in December 2011, won a Golden Rose at the prestigious Rose d’Or Television Festival in May 2012 and scooped Best TV movie/mini-series at the International Emmys last November. While Black Mirror’s second series doesn’t yet have an airdate, Brooker recently revealed on Twitter that it would be coming to Channel 4 "soonish".
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