It’s finally back.
After over a year of waiting, our television screens and tablets and phones have finally been graced with the long-awaited fourth season of Black Mirror.
And it does not disappoint.
Charlie Brooker’s anthology series about our relationship with technology and where we might end up if we’re not careful has been engrossing audiences ever since its debut on Channel 4 back in 2011 when the prime minister was forced to have sexual relations with a pig on live TV.
And since then, the storylines have not gotten any less strange.
Season four of the show landed on Netflix earlier today and if its first episode is anything to go by, we’re going to be in for a lot more uncomfortable yet thoroughly enjoyable viewing.
‘USS Callister’ is Black Mirror‘s first episode of 2017.
It takes the story of the sad, alienated atypical ‘Good Guy’ and turns it on its head, essentially turning the trope into a total creep who goes to great lengths to ensure that the people he doesn’t like are stuck in a totalitarian version of his favourite TV show that happens to bear a striking resemblance to Star Trek.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the episode because it really is worth a watch itself, but it involves a lollipop pay-off, a lot of deep-space outfits, and the phrase: “Stealing my pussy is a fucking red line.”
There’s even a scene where the main character Robert, played by Breaking Bad’s Jesse Plemons, messes up an app launch date because he was too busy staring at the new girl in the office.
Charming.
‘USS Callister’ somehow manages to be genuinely funny and entertaining while also being utterly horrifying, so peak Black Mirror, really.
We wouldn’t expect anything else.
