Review: Black Mirror - 'Be Right Back'

Black Mirror is back for a second series. Back to enthrall, disturb and forebode with macabre allegory and technophobic satire. It would be safe to say that there is nothing else like it on modern television, certainly nothing that manages to weave such disturbing thematic overtones into such a tangible science fiction. It is precisely this reality, with only minor futuristic perversions, that renders watching it such a brutally engaging experience. 

The first installment of this subsequent series epitomises the artistic depth that such a method can achieve. Charlie Brooker’s dialogue in this episode has surprised many critics through its sheer innocence and believability, his characters - a young couple deeply in love - converse in a natural and endearing manner. So subtle is the dialogue, that only on second watching are the foreboding hints noticed: Martha questions Ash as he ignores her while poring over his mobile phone, ‘Are you still solid?’.

Quite predictably, Ash is killed off within the first 15 minutes. Martha’s apprehensive wait when he does not return home, and the consequent blue lights that appear on the driveway, are typical of every spouse’s worst paranoia. Ash returns, however, through an app that allows a deceased user’s voice and mannerisms to be amalgamated into an automaton that lives inside Martha’s phone. This leads to an unsettling relationship between Martha and her phone, culminating in Martha’s hysterics after she accidentally breaks her phone on the floor. The acting is fantastic, the emotions tender and universal, the trauma crisp and captivating. 

Brooker does not stop there. Ash explains that there is ‘another level’ to the artificial resurrection. The body comes shipped in a cellophane bag, and must be left to stew in the bathtub before activation. When Ash is restored, just a computer program inside a robotic body, the confusion and revulsion are profound. Martha is so pleased to have Ash back, yet slowly discovers that there is something more to a human being which the computer program cannot capture, an autonomy and spontaneity that makes human relationships worthwhile. 

In this moral we find the underlying motivation for the series itself. Something can be so convincing, yet with one slight defect or mutation can be considered abhorrent. There is something human to society that Black Mirror perverts, much like Ash’s digital persona does not quite appease Martha’s grief. However, the difference is that this sinister effect is the purpose of Black Mirror’s exercise. The revulsion we experience can enable us to question how we might act in a similarly tragic scenario. Not only that, it reveals something about the subtleties of human nature which melodrama ignores, which in this instance is the necessity of grief when mourning someone you love, and the strength that confronting loss can provide. Fascinating and cathartic, brilliant television.