I never expected to find myself in the future. But here I ******* well am.
With Hated in the Nation, Black Mirror takes on a genre that I know down to my bones: the British police procedural. And it executes things flawlessly. Were it not for the way things ultimately go down at the end, this could very easily be the pilot for a new series. It establishes the characters brilliantly and it has the quiet, understated style of its genre, given a bleak twist. The always brilliant Kelly McDonald is pitch perfect as the abrasive Detective Karin Parke and Faye Marsay is also very good as the new Detective, Blue Coulson. As the story opens, a hated opinion journalist dies horrifically and mysteriously in her own home and the investigation ends up having ramifications that stretch across the country. Jonas Karlsson is very good as a tech guru and Benedict Wong, of Doctor Strange fame, is incredibly good as a short-tempered government agent. This episode just really, really landed for me and the ending is as devastatingly bleak as you want it to be. The use of Fall Into Me by Alev Lenz as the musical backing for those climactic moments is brilliant and, while the episode has been surprisingly understated at a lot of moments, the cumulative impact is emotionally devastating. It’s everything a Black Mirror season finale needs to be and any fan of Black Mirror knows exactly what I mean. 4 stars.
tl;dr – Black Mirror executes a flawless police procedural, given a signature grim twist; brilliantly acted, it’s understated at times, but the cumulative emotional effect is devastating. 4 stars.