Netflix
After being off the air for quite a few years, the hit Netflix anthology series Black Mirror returned for its sixth season with a new batch of episodes on Thursday, June 15.
With season five releasing back in 2019, quite a lot has changed since the last time creator Charlie Brooker delivered a fresh slate of dystopian nightmares.
So much so, in fact, the Brooker himself said in an interview that a “worrying” number of past Black Mirror storylines have become a reality in recent years. Like those robot dogs, for example.
“There do seem to be a worrying number of previous storylines that we’ve had in the show that then seem to come true with worrying frequency,” Brooker said in an interview with Sky News.
“I think that as the world gets more and more absurd it just means that you have to sort of approach things slightly differently – you just have to keep turning the dial-up I suppose.
“So I don’t know that it gets any more difficult so much as obviously as the world gets scarier – it means you’re typing while shivering with fear.”
Brooker isn’t just blowing smoke up his own behind, either, as there have been numerous examples of Black Mirror ideas crossing over into reality in the last few years.
Back in April, we brought you the story of an expert in the field saying that humans will be able to “upload their minds to computers and create a digital ‘twin’ so we can all ‘live’ on after death,” which is a concept explored in the episode “Be Right Back.”
There was also last summer when Amazon announced they could recreate the voice of deceased loved ones and play it through your Echo, which also reminded us of the season two episode “Be Right Back.” And that’s not even mentioning various developments in AI, self-driving cars, worldwide diseases, etc.
Just like the previous season of Black Mirror, the latest batch of episodes features an ensemble cast that includes Aaron Paul, Anjana Vasan, Annie Murphy, Ben Barnes, Daniel Portman, Danny Ramirez, Himesh Patel, John Hannah, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Michael Cera, Myha’la Herrold, Paapa Essiedu, Rob Delaney, Rory Culkin, Salma Hayek Pinault, and Zazie Beetz.