Black Mirror Isn't As Good As It Used to Be, And This is the Reason

Without a doubt, Charlie Brooker is one of the most exciting screenwriters working today, even if the vast majority of his writing is devoted to just one show — Black Mirror. The show's anthology format allows Brooker to constantly experiment, delighting fans with multiple stand-alone episodes, each exploring some dystopian technology-related idea.

But while the early seasons of Black Mirror were considered a master class in writing, it looks like the recently released Season 6 has disappointed most of the project's die-hard fans.

Season 6 only consists of five episodes, and considering that the previous installment was released all the way back in 2019, people were sure that Brooker had something special in store for them. However, the latest batch of Black Mirror episodes turned out to be a total flop, with only two stories, 'Loch Henry' and 'Beyond the Sea,' keeping viewers interested. Here's why Black Mirror isn't as good as it used to be.

At first, fans fell in love with the very first season of Black Mirror for how dark and unapologetically dystopian it was. Charlie Brooker wasn't playing it safe back then, so each episode left viewers in a state of existential terror. In recent seasons, however, the narrative has become more lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek, much to the chagrin of the series' longtime fans.

Also, the show is not as dystopian as it used to be, with many episodes having bright colors and mundane concepts, which is not something viewers normally expect from Black Mirror. For example, the current season's lowest rated episode, 'Mazey Day,' proved to be a huge disappointment to the fandom, as people argued that the movie Nightcrawler already touched on the theme of paparazzi and did it much better than Brooker.

So it looks like Black Mirror is becoming a much more family-friendly affair with each passing season, and the fact that Brooker prefers to write some lighthearted genre stories, instead of exploring more disturbing themes, is not making fans happy at all.

While some people think that Netflix might have been a bad influence on the creator, others argue that Black Mirror Season 3 was perfect even though it was produced by the streaming giant.