Ranking Black Mirror Episodes

There is a reason why in the history of television, there have been few anthology shows that actually work long term – basically because while you have to work towards a common theme every episode, you also need to come up with a new, but interconnected, idea. It’s hard – and you cannot fake it well. Black Mirror created by Charlie Brooker is one of the best the medium has ever seen – and that probably has something to do with the fact that there are not a lot of episodes – and there is generous breaks between seasons. Having said that, not all of the 23 episodes so far have been great – and the recent fifth season, of just three episodes, is the weakest they have ever done (I think that Charlie Booker should basically announce one final season – and go all out with however many stories he has left to tell – be that 1 or many, and end things). The last thing anyone needs is another ranking of Black Mirror episodes, so that is, of course, exactly what I have done now that I’ve finished the fifth season. One thing I’ve noticed – no one seems to agree on the order. It’s like ranking Coen brothers movies.

 

23. The Waldo Moment (Season 2, Episode 3 – Directed by Bryn Higgins)

The best Black Mirror episodes feel like our world just one step removed – one piece of technological advancement away from our reality. The Waldo Moment, in contrast, feels almost precisely like our world in that the idea of a profane, idiotic cartoon character being a successful politician is pretty much what has happened in America. Still, the episode could work better if it were better written – but as it stands, once it establishes its basic premise, it doesn’t really do anything but the most obvious things with it. Sure, the episode can be funny and entertaining – but I don’t think it ever really burrows under your skin and become truly disturbing. Really, this was a fairly easy choice for last place.

 

22. Arkangel (Season 4, Episode 2 – Directed by Jodie Foster)

The best Black Mirror episodes introduce a technology that sounds like a good idea – and then examines the unintended consequences of that technology. The problem with Arkangel is that the problems with the tech here – something that allows parents to monitor everything their kids see (literally through their eyes) and censor it as necessary, is so obvious from the outset that all the “twists” it takes are obvious. Add to that heavy handed storytelling, a finale that doesn’t really work, and decision making by the parent in question that defies all reason, and you have a very weak Black Mirror. Rosemarie DeWitt is a great actress, and she tries her best, but she’s about all this episode has going for it.

 

21. Striking Vipers (Season 5, Episode 1 – Directed by Owen Harris)

This is basically the “no homo” of Black Mirror episodes. Two old college friends reconnect after a while part – with one gifting the other a video game and VR hookup to what is basically an old Street Fighter game that they used to play. When they log on to play against each other – they do what they are supposed to do at first – and fight – but soon they make ultra-attractive avatars, one a man, one a woman – start having sex with each other, and they get all that physical sensation they want. It, of course, turns out to be the best sex they ever had. There are ways where this episode could work – but they don’t really explore them. A big part of the reason is neither the real life pair – Anthony Mackie and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II – or the Avatars – Pom Klementieff and Ludi Lin – have any real chemistry together. Part is that while they walk up to exploring the homoerotic tension in male relationships, they back-off by having the couple actually fucking being an opposite sex couple. As it turns out, the most interesting character in the film is Mackie’s wife – played by Nicole Beharie – especially where she ends up at the end. There are ideas here, but no real execution.

 

20. Men Against Fire (Season 4, Episode 5 – Directed by Jaokb Verbruggen)

While I don’t think Black Mirror plays the Gothca! – game too often, the best episodes do feature twists and turns that make you see things in a different way. The biggest problem with Men Against Fire is that the “twist” is so obvious from the opening minutes, and we have to wait for the episode to catch up with us. This is also one of the most serious, dark and depressing episodes the series has ever had – basically, it’s about technology making humans more efficient at committing genocide – and the episode is also overly violent. The storytelling could be cleaner as well – the flashbacks add nothing for example. This is an example of an episode that was good in theory, that didn’t quite flesh things out as well as it could have.

 

19. Bandersnatch (Stand Alone Movie – Directed by David Slade)

There is no denying the truly groundbreaking nature of Bandersnatch – which is a choose your own adventure episode of Black Mirror, which can end up in many different endings, all of them varying degrees of depressing, but some more violent (and longer) than others. What they did to pull it off – both technically and narratively – is quite an accomplishment in itself. And yet, as an experience, I just didn’t find it all that satisfying. You keep reaching an endpoint, and then looping back around to try and get to another endpoint. And yet none of them are particularly enlightening. While apparently you could spend five hours going through all the scenarios, I basically tapped out after about 90 minutes, and have never had the urge to revisit. Its groundbreaking, but it’s not an experience – at least not with this narrative – I want to revisit.

 

18. Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too (Season 5, Episode 3 – Directed by Anne Sewizky)

It’s kind of odd that Black Mirror got all the way to season 5 without really examining celebrity – sure, they examined internet celebrity, but not really our obsession with famous people. The kernel of the idea of Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too – where a lonely teenage girl is given a doll with A.I. that makes her a replica of her favorite popstar (played, quite well, by Miley Cyrus) – and what happens from there is an interesting one. It’s a little bit of bad luck that it came out so recently after the Child’s Play reboot – basically the same thing happens to Ashley Too that happens to Chucky (less the homicidal rage). And I typically do have a soft spot for Black Mirror episodes that don’t end in hopeless despair. And yet while the trio of lead performances (also including Angourie Rice and Madison Davenport) are quite good, the result is a little underwhelming. The re-written Nine Inch Nails songs are distracting. The technology isn’t really explored. And the happy ending seems forced. Overall, a fairly mediocre episode.  

 

17. Shut Up and Dance! (Season 3, Episode 3 – Directed by James Watkins)

There are a few things that bug me about this episode – the first being that in many ways, it is a repeat of Season 2’s White Bear, which isn’t top tier Black Mirror anyway. The biggest problem with the episode though is that you know, from close to the beginning, that the episode is withholding a big secret from you, and you spend the entire time waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yes, being caught on camera masturbating to pornography – as our “hero” is – would be embarrassing. But because of the circumstances around how and where he was caught on camera, it never really makes sense that he does everything he does until the episode finally pulls the rug out from under. Remember how I said Black Mirror rarely does – Gotcha! – storytelling. They did here, and it didn’t work as well as they thought it would.

 

16. Smithereens (Season 5, Episode 2 – Directed by James Hawes)

The best episode of the weak season 5 is still merely an okay one. Andrew Scott plays a desperate Uber driver, who kidnaps what he thinks is a high ranking employee of a big tech company (think Facebook or Twitter) – only to discover it’s only an intern – but he goes through with his plan anyway. All he really wants is to talk to the CEO and founder of the company (Topher Grace). But then his plan is discovered, and a despearate hostage situation develops in that car, in a field. It’s a good episode – a tense one, with a fine performance by Scott, and a good one by Grace as well. Still, this seems like an awful long way to go for what essentially becomes a “Don’t Text and Drive” PSA.

 

15. White Bear (Season 2, Episode 2 – Directed by Carl Tibbets)

In White Bear, we are placed right alongside the heroine – a very good Lenora Crichlow – as she wakes up, doesn’t know where she is or what is happening, and goes through a very long day trying to figure it out, stay alive and wondering why everyone is following her. In many ways, the episode is viscerally exciting, and it is very well directed. It’s the final twist that bugs me more than a little – because it makes the whole thing shallower than it first seemed. A good episode that should have been great.

 

14. Hated in the Nation (Season 3, Episode 6 – Directed by James Hawes)

I’m not quite sure why they decided that this episode had to be the longest in the series at 90 minutes – because to be honest, I think it would may rank a spot or two higher had they shortened to 60 minutes. Still this episode – which is essentially a version of Jon Ronson’ So You’ve Be Publicly Shamed – does what the best Black Mirror episodes do – take something from our current culture, and bring them to an extreme, if logical, conclusion. The episode is dark, bloody and violent – with a fine Kelly McDonald performance at the center. The episode works – but would be work better as a tighter, shorter episode.

 

13. Fifteen Million Merits (Season 1, Episode 2 – Directed by Euros Lyn)

I think what separates these “middle of the road” Black Mirror episodes – ones that are good, but not great – is that the great ones stick the landing, and the mediocre ones don’t quite. That’s the case with this episode – in which two people meet at the lowest rung of a reality show competition – peddling for hours each day to earn enough points to make it on the show, and who are both forced to make a decision at some point that could destroy them. I liked the setup of the episode, and I like everything that the main character – played by Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya) does after his new friend – Jessica Brown Findlay – makes her choice. The ending though feels a little too pat and predictable – a little too safe. A fine episode that was a step or two away from being a great one. It lets too many people off the hook – including those of us in the audience.

 

12. Black Museum (Season 4, Episode 6 – Directed by Colm McCarthy)

With the season 4 finale, Black Mirror tries to capture some of the old White Christmas magic, telling three interconnected stories that come together in an interesting way in the finale. Douglas Hodge plays a man who runs a true crime museum in the middle of nowhere, who tells three stories to his one customer (Letita Wright) – the first about a doctor who got a procedure that allowed him to feel the symptoms of his patients, with no physical consequences – who becomes addicted to pain, the second about a man who gets the consciousness of his comatose wife implanted in his brain, and finally, about a convicted murderer on death row who sells his own consciousness to Hodge. I love the atmosphere of the episode, I love the performances – but the stories stretch credibility (the second one in particular is – like Arkangel – one where you can see the problems before they begin). Still, it’s all effective and creepy, and has some good twists and turns all the way through.

 

11. Playtest (Season 3, Episode 2 – Directed by Dan Trachtenberg)

In many ways, I think Playtest is the most straight forward of all Black Mirror episodes – the premise is simple and the story follows the beats you expect it to all the way until the end. Yet it also has one of the highest levels of execution in the entire run of the series – yes, the episode lacks the ambition of the series best episodes, but dammit all it, it is scary as hell. In the episode, an American Tourist (Wyatt Russell) signs up for a new virtual reality game – one that will basically plunge him into his deepest fears – and, well, things go as you would expect them to. Directed by Dan Trachteneberg – who also did 10 Cloverfield Lane – this episode shows that sometimes straight ahead horror works best for this show. Yes, its lack of ambition pushes it down the list a little – but this episode is still excellent.

 

10. Metalhead (Season 4, Episode 5 – Directed by David Slade)

Metalhead may well be the simplest of all Black Mirror episodes (it’s between this and Playtest)– it’s basically an all-out chase from beginning to end, when a group of people try to break into an abandoned warehouse to get a replacement for someone and end up being chased by a killer robot dog. A few things make this episode one of the more out and out entertaining of all of them is the performance by Maxime Peake, who is pretty much on her own for the entire runtime, David Salde’s direction, which doesn’t rest, and knows to get out in 40 minutes flat, and the look of the episode – shot in black and white. Also, you could argue that Metalhead is perhaps the bleakest episode of the series – if this is all a shared universe, eventually, we’re going to end up in this post-apocalyptical hell scape we see here. We’re all as screwed as the lead character.

 

9. Crocodile (Season 4, Episode 3 – Directed by John Hillcoat)

With a few changes, Crocodile may have leaped up this chart a little bit. I love the film noir storytelling in the episode – where basically a normal person gets in over their head, and dig themselves deeper and deeper into murder and mayhem. The performance by the great Andrea Risenborough – who smartly knew she should do this role, which was originally written for a man, is among the best the series has seen as the main character in question – who in order to cover up their role in an accidental death years ago, murders someone, and then sees it spiral out of control. The problem is, once the technology in the episode is revealed – a machine used to view people’s memories – this time used by an insurance adjuster – it becomes very clear where all of this is going to end up – and the final twist (who they get the memories from), is far-fetched to say the least. Still, I love the bleakness of this episode, and just how far it all goes. So, a great episode that should have been one of the very best.

 

8. White Christmas (Season 2, Episode 4 – Directed by Carl Tibbetts)

This episode – a standalone Christmas special, really between Seasons 2 and 3 – is almost a mini-season unto itself, telling three stories in its 74 minute runtime. Still, even in the compressed time of the episode, this trio of stories has some of the best ideas, and most disturbing moments in all of Black Mirror – in particular the idea of real world blocking, which is ingenious. Add to that great performances by Jon Hamm – great at being completely amoral – and Rafe Spall, not much better, but more sympathetic, and you a disturbing trio of stories, done right. Any of the three could have been standalone hours – and you could argue should have been – but they work here.

 

7. The Entire History of You (Season 1, Episode 3 - Directed by Brian Welsh)

The first season of Black Mirror ended with this – one of the darker episodes, which is also one of the most recognizably human ones. In the episode, everyone has a “grain” installed in their head, which records their entire lives, which can then be played back for you on a moment’s notice. Things spiral out of control when a jealous husband (Toby Kebbell) starts to distrust his wife (Jodie Whitaker) – and starts to doubt that he is even the father of their child. The episode is effective to be sure – leading up to a devastating finale. What keeps it out of the top five for me is a couple of things – first, it’s a little too Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for me, and second, we know that the ending is coming. Yet, the episode is all too relatedly human – showing how we will always use whatever technology we have, to destroy our relationships.

 

 

6. Nosedive (Season 3, Episode 1 – Directed by Joe Wright)

I think you could argue that out of all the great performances Black Mirror has had, none are better than Bryce Dallas Howard’s excellent work here. In the episode, she plays Lacie, who like everyone else in society is worried and obsessed over how liked she is on social networks – where each and every interaction you have is rated by everyone else, and how you score determines everything in your life. You can tell what happens to Howard based on the title of this episode – but watching it play out is glorious. Directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, Darkest Hour) and written by Rashida Jones & Michael Shur, the episode is a delight – going to some very dark places, but having a blast all the way there.

 

5. The National Anthem (Season 1, Episode 1 – Directed by Otto Bathurst)

How do you grab attention, when your one of hundreds of new shows every year? In the case of Black Mirror, you do an episode where a terrorist kidnaps a Princess, and demands that the British Prime Minister fuck a pig on live TV to get her released – and then, you have him actually do it. That premise probably sounds disgusting (it is), but it doesn’t really describe the episode, which of goes through a hell of a lot of tones as it goes from sublimely ridiculous to disturbing and back again. In many ways, the episode isn’t all that much like other Black Mirror episodes – there isn’t a technology really running amok here – but it does set out, from the start, just how disturbing this series is going to be. If you can make it through this one, you’re good to go for the rest of the series – and if not, it’s best you stop here. Even better though is the fact that unlike the follow-up episode – Fifteen Million Merits – this episode doesn’t let anyone off the hook – you, in the audience, are as responsible as anyone else.

 

4. USS Callister (Season 4, Episode 1 – Directed by Toby Haynes)

Certainly one of the most ambitious (and longest) episodes of the series – this series wonderfully recreates the look and feel of old Star Trek, and then turns everything bleak in the real world. It also includes two of the best performances in Black Mirror – one by Christin Milioti as a woman who unknowingly becomes the latest plaything of a narcissist, and even better one by Jesse Plemons as that narcissist – who starts out so sympathetic, before we realize what a monster he is. The arc of the story ends up being a little more predictable than you think it will be, but it remains entertaining and effective throughout – and is one of the best pieces in recent pop culture on the danger of nostalgia, and how it can poison everything.

 

3. San Junipero (Season 3, Episode 4 – Directed by Owen Harris)

Wait a minute, this cannot be right – a Black Mirror episode with a happy ending (or at least what passes for one in this series). San Junipero perfectly casts Mackenzie Davis a geeky wallflower in 1987, who falls in love with the also perfectly cast Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a party child when they meet in the club on Saturday night. You know that this really isn’t 1987, and at some point, the other shoe will drop (there is more than enough hints along the way) – and when it comes, the answer isn’t overly original, but it is perfect. The stars are perfectly matched here, and director Owen Harris does a great job at plumbing 1980s nostalgia. The film doesn’t back away from the darkness at its core – Mbatha-Raw makes a very compelling case against it – but it still embraces it anyway. This is a Black Mirror episode with a happy ending, tinged with sadness – one where you know precisely why they do what they do, and still, perhaps question it. I loved this one.

 

2. Hang the DJ (season 4, Episode 4 – Directed by Tim Van Patten)

As you can tell from this and the one right beneath it, I actually like Black Mirror a little bit more when not everything is so dire. Hang the DJ is basically a romantic comedy, where two people fall in love, but are kept apart by stupid forces beyond their control. It’s actually quite surprising that it took until season 4 for Black Mirror to finally address online dating – and the weird algorithms they use to get everyone’s perfect matches – and it’s a delightful surprise that everything ends well for the central couple. Its great when something like this can leave you smiling, while still raising troubling questions. A great surprise.

 

1. Be Right Back (Season 2, Episode 1 – Directed by Owen Harris)

As much as I love a few other Black Mirror episodes, this is the only one I ever really considered for the top spot. It truly is the best one. It’s the best one because it most fulfills the promise of the premise of the show – showing us the darker side of our continued technological growth, but marries it with relatable characters, right up to the final image that just may make you cry. In the episode, Hayley Atwell plays a grieving widow, who discovers that for a price, she can be provides with a substitute husband (Domhall Gleason) – who will have her husband’s consciousness, and a body that looks like him and everything. The episode is a complicated look at grief and loneliness and the inability to move on. It is some of the best science fiction you will ever see – and the clear choice for best Black Mirror episode ever. I don’t think they’ll ever top it.