Black Mirror Season 6 explained: Reflections of a shattered world

Salma Hayek in Black Mirror Season 6, episode 1: Joan is Awful. Black Mirror, which has brought 27 episodes and an interactive film since 2011, has bagged three Emmy awards. (Screen grab/Netflix)

The mid-June dropping of Black Mirror’s latest and sixth season on Netflix has been an early trick or treat. The cult anthology series by Charlie Brooker, a dark favourite for fans of dystopian fiction, is back with more of its trademark tumult and sci-fi scenarios. One of the five episodes even features a werewolf for the first time, taking the series into supernatural terrain.

The first episode, Joan is Awful, starring Annie Murphy and Salma Hayek, has a Netflix-variant of its own called Streamberry with 24x7 live streaming of unsuspecting victims who have signed away their rights because of the human tendency to overlook the fine print. Brrr. If that isn’t creepy enough, this casual invasion of citizen privacy, there are other elements that throw the audience off, including a scatological one. Yes, Joan is awful but what happens to her is awfuller.

In Loch Henry, Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and Pia (Myha’la Herrold) start to video-record the building where a mass murder had occurred years ago, because, you know, everyone likes a documentary on a sordid event. But the personal connect is what pushes it above the ordinary and here comes the personal connect…

Beyond the Sea, with astronauts David (Josh Hartnett) and Cliff (Aaron Paul), also features an earth-bound wife (Kate Mara). Together they weave a real-unreal saga that ends in the kind of reality that’s not easily escapable.

Mazey Day tells the story of celeb Mazey Day (Clara Rugaard) in what we think is a straight road, only to be taken into bizarre backalleys. As twists go, we don’t see this one coming, and have to align our eyebrows with those of paparazzi Bo (Zazie Beetz).

Demon 79 is a personal favourite, not least because the protagonist Nida (Anjana Vasan) is a Singaporean actor who plays an Indian. With a mother in the past who wasn’t all there and biryani for lunch in the present in a Britain of the seventies. Racism and daydreams usher her into the presence of demon Gaap (Paapa Essiedu), who comes in Boney M togs. Described as a ‘journey from the depths of Hell to the North of England’, this is perhaps the longest episode, and apart from the spectacular acting by Anjana, has the best comic lines. For a story of murder sprees, the air is light with repartee and romance.

Black Mirror, which has brought 27 episodes and an interactive film since 2011, has bagged three Emmy awards. Its episodes like The National Anthem, Be Right Back, The Entire History of You, San Juniper, White Bear, Shut Up and Dance, Hang the DJ, Black Museum, etc., have had differing storylines converging into the same flowing channel of what-could-be and OMG. The actors too have been exceptional; in Smithereens, Andrew Scott is a driver who takes his unsuspecting passenger hostage.

Brooker, who promised in a media interview, ‘Black Mirror should always be a show that can’t be easily defined,’ has kept his promise. Chew those nails off as you wait for the seventh season.