Black Mirror

A coworker from my job before the move to St. Louis recommended the Netflix series "Black Mirror" and I have just today finished watching all of the shows. It is mostly good. It is kinda like "The Twilight Zone" in that every show is an independent story. Various actors and directors collaborate. There is an episode directed by Jodie Foster for example. It's got both British and American talent. The first two seasons are just British, having played on British television a little after I started this blog. December 4th of 2011 would have been the first airing of the first show. Anyhow, I guess it disappeared and then Netflix picked it up and now it's got a hodgepodge of British and American influences. We are on season four now and that has been around since the end of last year. While a Twilight Zone episode could be about anything, there are not any Black Mirror shows about say a magic necklace (or was that a stopwatch) that freezes time. Black Mirror is consistently about technology and often technology represented in sinister futuristic extrapolations. A lot of it might as well be about magic though as it just seems farfetched to me. The over-the-top nature does not ruin the show though. It is probably better that we get crazy than that we don't in terms of keeping the audience engaged. The fourth show of the fourth season, Hang the DJ, is the best show. It has a pretty enchanting star in a Ms. Georgina Campbell who I had not seen before and also has the most intriguing premise with regards to tech. Basically, in order for a dating service to match you, you have to go out of a few practice dates. Metrics and data are slurped off the experiences and that is used in an algorithm for better matching. This really had my attention because as far as I know match.com and the like do not refine their matching based on a user's history, narrowing in on a lower likelihood of a mispairing. It was rumored that match.com just doesn’t work if you're not Christian for example. But won't the dating game eventually go this direction? It seems like this episode is predicting the future. Good job guys! I recommend Black Mirror.

Addendum 4/2/2018: "Hang the DJ" is kinda like the film "The Lobster" only a little better. I wanted to mention that yesterday but forgot to do so. It was Easter, April Fools, and the Persian New Year so I was distracted I guess.