‘Black Mirror’ Is at Its Best When Dealing With Love, Not Darkness

From politicians forced to do the unspeakable to pigs on live TV to pop stars drugged into submission by their own managers, Black Mirror has always been known for the bleakness of its stories. Created by Charlie Brooker, the Netflix sci-fi anthology series takes a long, hard look at our relationship with technology. What it sees is rarely good. In the world of Black Mirror, artificial intelligence and technological development are merely a conduit for humanity’s worst instincts. The series shows us a universe very much like our own, in which our overreliance on social media and smart devices leads only to death, desolation, and despair.