This seventy-odd minute episode is kind of a Christmas special in lieu of a third season. Each season so far has consisted of three episodes and this episode is an anthology film, featuring three distinct stories linked by an overarching narrative. I think this structure really works. The stories here are good, in my opinion, and made better by the fact that they’re not blown up to episode length. The story of the “cookie” for instance is a sharp, bitter, bracing pill to swallow and it’s good that it’s only about twenty minutes. Blowing it up to “episode-length” would be stretching things a lot. The other thing that really works here is that, while this at first seems like the genesis might have been three totally separate scripts, at the end of the episode you realize that you did need all of these stories told at one time. The “cookie” again is a perfect example of how good the show can be at planting an idea in a really organic way and then bringing it back at the end after you, as the viewer, have moved on from it, because you really thought it only related to that one story and not to the framing narrative as well.
This is the show back at shades of pitch black and this episode is both more nihilistic and better than anything in the second season. The first two stories, which feature a wonderful performance by Jon Hamm, playing to his strengths, are both short and stinging little tales. Hamm is really compelling as an affable, charming man who is hiding a bit of a sociopathic streak. The first story, the tale of a young man, played in a great quasi-comedic turn by Rasmus Hardiker, using technology to find a girlfriend, makes a very Black Mirror-esque statement about technology, I thought. It’s about how technology might enable any moment in a person’s life to be reviewed and analyzed right there in the moment by a crew of people, but that might not always work out the way you’d think. You have six to eight people listening to exactly what’s being said and yet they all miss the point, misunderstand completely what is really being said. That’s a great point to make.
The third story is a little weaker, I think, but the powerhouse performance by Rafe Spall really elevates it quite a bit. His performance is intense and wonderful. He keeps himself to a very minimal performance for about the first half of the episode and then lets you see him just crack and unwind completely over the rest of the show. After the first two, really ugly stories, I was poised for a real nightmare of a finale, especially when Spall gives that eerie smile to Hamm when Hamm says he thinks Spall is probably a good man. But Spall is more the victim than the perpetrator of wrong-doing in his story and that makes the story not quite as dark as I was expecting and also makes the incredibly harsh ending a little unsatisfying. I mean, I get that it’s supposed to be disturbing and it is for sure, but it also doesn’t quite feel right. There are a couple of other things that don’t exactly work. Some of the call-backs to the first two seasons are clumsy and only serve to point out how this episode isn’t as good as some previous ones. The usage of the song from Fifteen Million Merits at one point is a great example. And the episode goes for some kind of strange things that don’t really work. There’s a repeated anecdote about a horse, for instance, that recurs over the episode and you feel like Brooker was going for something there, but you can’t quite figure out what. But this episode is a big step back toward the brilliance of the first season after an inconsistent second season. Dark, mean-spirited, nihilistic, smartly written and driven by two really excellent central performances, White Christmas is a lump of coal in all the right ways. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – omnibus film is smartly written & is a step in the right direction for a show that struggled in its second season; really wonderful performances from Hamm & Spall elevate things. 3 ½ stars.