Black Mirror is a reality check. It is not a feel-good show, but manages to redeem its perturbing quality with its penetrating insight and indictment of mainstream society. It's m.o. is poignantly portraying and exploring the role technology is playing in our present through a series of futuristic, somewhat hyperbolized sci-fi scenarios where society has arguably mal-adapted to technological advance.

The thing is despite the futuristic setting, the show resonates intensely with the now, I guess, as good sci-fi should do. A sample of themes from season one:

-How absurdity, grotesqueness, and even violence have been trivialized to the extent of becoming entertainment at times. How trauma, depicted so readily on screens these days, has become something to watch primarily for stimulation. How, in many ways, we've become sadistic spectators or at best desensitized unconcerned bystanders.

-How a system that commodifies human life and energy (particularly lower and middle- class human life and energy) i.e. "a dead-end job" is maintained by aloof sociopathic elites through the brainwashes of materialism, distraction, and dream- selling. AND how society is complicit in this basically by being satisfied with the comfort of minimal needs being met, no matter how vapid and mundane this renders their life.

-How perfect memory, its storage, and recollection can be a double-edged sword. In a society where everyone has a brain implant that records and stores all audiovisual aspects of an individual experience for playback (and projection for all to see) at any moment, what issues will arise? How would you use it? To what extent would you relive your pains, your pleasures? To what extent would you fact-check your friends, family members, and lovers? To what extent would you chase clarity on events that happened outside of your experience, since you know an accessible recording exists in another person?

The subsequent seasons continue to tackle various heady and humane issues connected in some way with advanced technology (e.g. hacking, terrorism, virtual/augmented reality, racism, social media addiction, manipulated consciousness). Every episode is its own mental trip, has a twist, and most leave you with a sense of psychological vertigo. This probably isn't a show you want to binge-watch because, again, it isn't a feel good show due to its existential tone (even though it has some truly funny parts and scattered gems in the dialogue). But it IS a show that engrosses your mind and gut, and compels you to watch every episode. I like to think this show is like medicine: sometimes hard to palate, but necessary. I took off a star only because some of the endings frustrate far more than they satisfy which, all considered, might be the point.

Great show. Highly recommend.