I got about halfway through this review before I decided to stop reading it; what a terrible review.
@Gary: The irony is duly noted, however all the same I think it's a decent enough review.
I've seen three Black Mirror episodes so far and I am struggling to find a reason to watch the rest. The Prime minister pig-fucking episode was the most interesting, but that isn't really saying much. The series seems to thrive on depicting grotesques, unending human suffering, and casual acts of malice, without an adequate reason. It isn't funny or entertaining enough to get us over the misery, and the themes/messages explored don't justify it either.
Basically, the show is meaner than it is smart.
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Yeah, Gary, I get your point, but I stopped watching because Black Mirror was unpleasant and vapid, not because it was just "bad" or had any flaws in performance or direction. And after considering your statement, the final minutes of episode one are now thoroughly lodged in my brain. My opinion is unchanged. That was revoltingly stupid and I wish I hadn't seen it. I don't need to eat the whole meal to know it tastes rotten.
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Why?
I had heard of this show being spoken of as a modern Twilight Zone, but didn't even watch through the first episode, giving up around where Callow was being driving to the studio. I read the spoilers, and am unimpressed. It's just an overblown anti-mass media message which employs the same reliance on Bile Fascination as the antagonist in its own story. And before you tell me that was the whole point, "these awful people are you, audience!", I consider it self-defeating to condemn a practice while making use of it yourself.
After a few days, I decided to give the second episode a chance, gave up even faster after I could tell which way the wind was blowing, read the spoilers, and am glad I didn't see this to the end either. Frankly, it seems like it was more awful and pretentious than the first episode.
I find it an insult to the Twilight Zone for it to be compared to this. Twilight Zone was dark at times, it did have uplifting episodes, and even at it's darkest it was nowhere near "1.3 billion people watch a sobbing man hump a pig to save someone's life". There was subtlety to it, and variation, hope, fear, justice, cruelty, nobility, irony. This isn't a dark examination of modern culture. This is just being as pointlessly dark as possible under the pretense of social criticism.
And you can't expect me to take seriously the moral of humanity's awful fascination with the rape and humiliation of a man for over an hour when I didn't bother to finish the episode.