4 ms·

I guess it's just me. I simply don't find Black Mirror to be that good. To me it's like a revamped and overhyped Tales of the Unexpected ( https://en.wikipedi

by JackFr 10y ago

I guess it's just me. I simply don't find Black Mirror to be that good. To me it's like a revamped and overhyped Tales of the Unexpected ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_the_Unexpected_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_the_Unexpected_(TV_se... ) It tries to be smart by attempting to address social changes we see to today, but it's clumsy and overbearing and the writing is not up to the task. I look at classic Twilight Zone and I feel they did more with less. In some respects even the writing from Tales from the Crypt offered more believable characters. Anyway one person's (clearly) minority opinion.

aaron695 10y ago
I agree in some ways. It's one if those shows I don't think people get... Everyone thinks it's great, but is it... It's has amazing production values. Great actors. Good dialog. Buuuut it's missing plot. It uses emotion as a replacement. And as each story is separate I think you don't seem to notice. But for some reason I think I enjoy it. So perhaps we don't need a good story for a TV show. Or perhaps it's a cheap trick that might wear out if everyone jumps on board. PS try re-watching TZ. It wasn't as good as I thought when I re-watched it. Most episodes were at best OK.
ashark 10y ago
A lot of what's great about Black Mirror is what it doesn't show you. It's great at showing you enough of something to know what's going on, but not hammering it home to make sure you got it like a lesser show might. As an example, in the first episode of Season 3 (no spoiler here I think) a character leaves an area where there's a billboard with her and a guy on it, and her image fades from it. Personalized images in ads are something we've seen in other media so I'm not claiming the idea is novel, but a lesser show might still have felt the need to show someone else walking up and their image appearing on the billboard, replacing the one that had been there. Black Mirror is content to show the image fade, then cut without replacing it. This is good taste and confidence, and it's one of the show's greatest attributes. It manifests in many small choices like this in every episode. Similarly, it sometimes uses what it doesn't show us to carry most of the weight of an entire episode's central theme (Fifteen Million Merits does this, for instance). It may also throw sensation at the viewer as a bait, as it pointedly does in The National Anthem, revealing this when the camera chooses to entirely ignore the sensational event toward which the episode has been building to instead show us something both more mundane and far more disgusting in every way that matters. The subjects of that scene push the viewer to reflect on themselves—showing us the watchers when we are watchers—which is one hell of a smart gut-punch. There are a couple bad episodes, though (well, there was one, but now season 3's out and by my reckoning there are now three), and if I were walking a n00b through the series I'd probably show them the series' first episode last because it's both structurally different from all the rest and I think easier to appreciate when you've got a better feel for what the show's doing. It's a bad introductory episode, IMO.

by JackFr 10y ago

aaron695 10y ago

I agree in some ways. It's one if those shows I don't think people get... Everyone thinks it's great, but is it... It's has amazing production values. Great actors. Good dialog. Buuuut it's missing plot. It uses emotion as a replacement. And as each story is separate I think you don't seem to notice. But for some reason I think I enjoy it. So perhaps we don't need a good story for a TV show. Or perhaps it's a cheap trick that might wear out if everyone jumps on board. PS try re-watching TZ. It wasn't as good as I thought when I re-watched it. Most episodes were at best OK.

ashark 10y ago

A lot of what's great about Black Mirror is what it doesn't show you. It's great at showing you enough of something to know what's going on, but not hammering it home to make sure you got it like a lesser show might. As an example, in the first episode of Season 3 (no spoiler here I think) a character leaves an area where there's a billboard with her and a guy on it, and her image fades from it. Personalized images in ads are something we've seen in other media so I'm not claiming the idea is novel, but a lesser show might still have felt the need to show someone else walking up and their image appearing on the billboard, replacing the one that had been there. Black Mirror is content to show the image fade, then cut without replacing it. This is good taste and confidence, and it's one of the show's greatest attributes. It manifests in many small choices like this in every episode. Similarly, it sometimes uses what it doesn't show us to carry most of the weight of an entire episode's central theme (Fifteen Million Merits does this, for instance). It may also throw sensation at the viewer as a bait, as it pointedly does in The National Anthem, revealing this when the camera chooses to entirely ignore the sensational event toward which the episode has been building to instead show us something both more mundane and far more disgusting in every way that matters. The subjects of that scene push the viewer to reflect on themselves—showing us the watchers when we are watchers—which is one hell of a smart gut-punch. There are a couple bad episodes, though (well, there was one, but now season 3's out and by my reckoning there are now three), and if I were walking a n00b through the series I'd probably show them the series' first episode last because it's both structurally different from all the rest and I think easier to appreciate when you've got a better feel for what the show's doing. It's a bad introductory episode, IMO.