Netflix’s position of power is so predominant that it can allow itself the whim that Charlie Brooker, one of its star writers, uses the sixth season of Black Mirror to throw darts against the very company that produces the episodes. It has 221 million subscribers, knows how to monetize them, and unlike rival platforms, the service makes a profit instead of a loss. So if Brooker, who was hired for his sharp pen, decides to invest his creative freedom in criticizing the one who writes those big checks, Netflix won’t flinch. He is like a lion lying down, his eyes narrowed, unperturbed by the mosquitoes that try to feast on him, aware that he is lord and master of the land.
The first two episodes of the season released this Thursday, moreover, leave no doubt about its intention. In Joan Is Awful, actress Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek) is Joan, a middle manager at a tech company who doesn’t feel sorry for firing an employee. She even feels annoyed that he has to put up with her pleas, asking for security to help kick her out of her office. But, when Joan gets home, she finds a series called Joan is awful on the Streamberry content platform (which even has Netflix’s “tudum”) with Salma Hayek on the cover with her hairstyle. And what a surprise she gets when she discovers that the plot of the first episode is practically the same as the events she experienced during the day (and what a surprise we viewers can get when we see that the Catalan Bea Segura has a role in the episode).
The script, unequivocally funny and which has the ideal actress in Murphy, puts on the table the lack of care of citizens when it comes to moving through the internet, giving up more information than is appropriate to technology companies (it is already rumored that Netflix knows more about your family than the government) and the challenges that artificial intelligence brings to the audiovisual industry. It is an acid criticism that, ironically, is less effective when found on the platform.
Yes, it could be argued that “Charlie Brooker has played Netflix” but anyone who knows how the creation process works under the orders of a studio knows that the scripts are read by the directors, who in turn give their opinion on the text and possible improvements, until they receive the green light to be produced. In fact, the company scores somewhat by showing a sense of humor, offering superficial self-criticism and reaffirming itself before the public as a cool, informal company, capable of laughing at itself, recovering that image that the public had in its beginnings and that eroded so much by the level of production, their cancellation habits and by preventing the sharing of accounts. Given that Netflix is ??criticized, it is better that it be done from within.
And, in fact, in the second episode, titled Loch Henry, he repeats the operation. A young couple played by Samuel Blenkin (The Witcher: Origin of Blood) and Myha’la Herrold (Industry) visit his hometown. There, she discovers why no one wants to set foot in such a beautiful town: twenty years ago, two visitors disappeared and a neighbor was revealed to be the equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. So, she is clear: the documentary that they have yet to shoot should focus on these events, taking advantage of the boom in true crimes and serial murderers on television.
In fact, the characters try to sell the project to Streamberry while showing a total lack of respect for the victims, behaving as if they were facing a vein of gold and not before murders that destroyed the lives of dozens of people. A veiled reference to Netflix is ??even made, criticizing its number of true crime productions in the catalog, denouncing to what extent it does business with misfortune and morbidity: the more twisted and ruthless a crime is, the more entertainment can be squeezed. It is the same maneuver again: if a company highlights its own defect and laughs at it, it reduces the chances that third parties can harm it with their criticism.
It’s a clever move for the platform with a sixth season of Black Mirror that, to be honest, doesn’t have much to say anymore. The virtue of the anthology format was that, when Charlie Brooker hit the nail on the head, he managed to convey the unease of looking into the future of the human condition through the television screen, emphasizing just how deplorable the human race can be, and therefore therefore, the use of technology will also be. Now, on the other hand, the series is satisfied with anecdotes with a more superficial profile but well executed.
Joan is awful, for example, is an ingenious comedy exercise that delves into one of the easiest resources to get critics in your pocket: a meta-television commentary with which Annie Murphy and Salma Hayek decided to have a good time. Loch Henry is lazy in that she is predictable and she doesn’t even have an original or surprising speech when it comes to developing the starting point, but she knows how to move easily with the hooks of the television genre that she comments on.
And in Beyond the Sea, the last episode I was able to see before writing, a story is offered that, as the most traditional Black Mirror commands, renders the technological element insignificant compared to the conflicts of the characters, a Josh Harnett ( Penny dreadful) and an Aaron Paul (Breaking bad) isolated together on a space satellite while they can visit their respective families by placing their consciousness in humanoid robots residing in their home.
The subtlety of the trigger (the sixties reference was superfluous) and an outcome that is written as one can imagine do not erase the successes: the dramatic power of some scenes, the closeness of their conflicts, the fantastic work of John Crowley as director and an Aaron Paul showing that he can move in more restrained registers. These three examples, in fact, are a demonstration of how Black Mirror can be sustained: if Charlie Brooker has lost the gift of seeing the future in a fictional landscape where so many series comment so well on the present and our insecurities about what is to come (Years and Years, The Handmaid’s Tale), at least write anthology episodes as entertaining as these.
