Black Mirror

[Ghastly McNasty]

Amazing piece of TV currently on ch4. Dont catch the end of it. It's repeated an 4+1 at 10.00.

It's a total must watch.

[Goaty]

Yeah love it! that I didn't expect on programme that kidnappers of British Royal Princess demand that PM to having a sex with pig live on all TV channels! Haha!

[Roger Godpleton]

I walked down to the ocean
After waking from a nightmare
No moon, no pale reflection
Black Mirror, Black Mirror

Shot by a security camera
You can't watch your own image
And also look yourself in the eye
Black Mirror, Black Mirror, Black Mirror

I know a time is coming
All words will lose their meaning
Please show me something that isn't mine
But mine is the only kind that I relate to
Le miroir casse
The mirror casts mon reflet partour
Black Mirror, Black Mirror, Black Mirror

The black mirror knows no reflection
It knows not pride or vanity
It cares not about your dreams
It cares not for your pyramid schemes
Their names are never spoken
The curse is never broken
The curse is never broken

Un! Deux! Trois! Dis: Miroir Noir!
Black Mirror!
Un! Deux! Trois! Dis: Miroir Noir!
Black Mirror!

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Show me where them bombs will fall
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Show me where them bombs will fall

Black Mirror!
Black Mirror!
Black Mirror!

[TordelBack]

I love Charlie Brooker, but that was pretty poor.  The 'twist' was scarcely worth speaking about, and the plotholes were many.

[Ghastly McNasty]

Didn't relaise it was Brooker till the end credits. That man is a ledge.

I thought it was jaws to the floor TV that.

[Eric Plumrose]

Bloody Christ but just about anything CBeebies has to offer is more convincing than that ridiculous piece of shit.

[Steve Green]

Eh? Why should there be a twist?

It was OK, thought Rory Kinnear was v good.

[TordelBack]

Eh? Why should there be a twist?

Fair point - but in the absence of an interesting conclusion, I suppose I was looking for some kind of payoff for sitting through it... 

[Mardroid]

A product of a sick sick mind.

I'll admit, I rather enjoyed it and it made me chuckle.

[M.I.K.]

Thought the reactions of the various members of the general public to the situation were believable and much what they would be in reality and thought the writing and acting were alright. Take away the bit with the pig, though, and you have a pretty unoriginal and quite predictable story.

"We've found the kidnapped girl - Oops, no we haven't, it's a mannequin in an abandoned building" being one of the bigger cliches.

Or, to put it another way, "our princess is in another castle".

[JOE SOAP]

It was average in the writing and really felt like it was trying to be cleverer and edgier than it really was. The concept, style and pace of the series is interesting, a Kieslowskian Dekalog/Twilight Zone about modern morals but the writing is nowhere near what it needs to be for that to work especially if it's relying on disgust/shock…and where was the money shot?


Did anyone spot the Chief Judge from the forthcoming Dredd?

[Emperor]

Eh? Why should there be a twist?

Because that is what he is aiming for:

The series was inspired, indirectly, by The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's hugely entertaining TV series of the late 50s and early 60s, sometimes incorrectly dismissed as a camp exercise in twist-in-the-tale sci-fi.

...

For me the joy of shows like The Twilight Zone, such as Tales of the Unexpected, or Hammer House of Horror, or erstwhile "showcase slots" such as Play for Today, was precisely that you hadn't already seen it. Every week you were plunged into a slightly different world. There was a signature tone to the stories, the same dark chocolate coating – but the filling was always a surprise.

That's what we're aiming for with Black Mirror

www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/01/charlie-brooker-dark-side-gadget-addiction-black-mirror

So I was expecting a nasty twist in the tale (no pun intended) or at least a sting, so the end was a bit flat for me but taken as more of a cutting social satire I think it was very effective (the "twist" was really a riff on the we are the monsters twist), although it does rather fall apart when you think about it (I know plenty of people who'd not watch it and a lot who'd be there to see if he'd do it and then walk out when it is clear he is going all the way, it'd take a hardened #cough# pervert to stick with the broadcast for a whole hour - so the streets would never be deserted and would rapidly fill up once the PM had started his grim task. Also some criminals would take advantage of everyone's attention being elsewhere so there would need to be people manning the CCTV monitoring stations, even if they were sneaking peeks at the footage on their phones - after all, they didn't know who was behind all this, so it could have been terrorists relying on the event to provide the perfect misdirection, so security forces would have been on high alert. Including plenty of bobbies on the street in case of any outbreaks of disorder of the PM hadn't gone through with it. So they'd have actually have found the princess quicker, even before we look that the fact that she was released half an hour early, just when people might have been rushing to get home or to the pub, so they'd have run into her. So ending on the "yes you are all sick voyeuristic bastards who could have stopped this if you hadn't been watching prime-ministerial bestiality" does rather rely on the vast percentage of people staying off the streets for half an hour before the broadcast started until the... climax, which doesn't work).

[Steve Green]

Yeah, I read that - but he does say inspired indirectly by and also mentions Play for Today.

[Batman's Superior Cousin]

Any chance of a repeat?

[Steve Green]

It's on 4oD, or it will probably turn up on E4 at some point.