In this Season Five premiere, Black Mirror returns to the world of virtual reality as two friends from college reconnect in adulthood and find a . . . creative use for a new VR fighting game. This episode is one of the weaker ones of the series, I’d say, for a couple of reasons. The idea of exploring the ways in which technology and infidelity can feed on each other is a good one, but the central idea here isn’t really enough to sustain an episode that’s nearly eighty minutes long. Once the situation is established, we spend a lot of time watching repetitive sex scenes or listening to the characters’ avatars have the same conversation over and over again. And unfortunately, the episode was never really able to make the connection between the characters and the avatars feel real. I mean, I never really felt like the two avatar characters were “really” the main characters if that makes sense. The cast is pretty good. Mackie is cast against type as an out-of-shape surburban dad and he’s surprisingly nuanced, especially in the back third of the episode. Nicole Beharie, as Mackie’s wife, gives the best performance in the episode, I think; she’s really excellent. But, on the whole, this one’s mediocre and overlong. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – season five gets off to a mediocre start with an overlong, repetitious story of sex and VR; a couple of good performances, but the script isn’t up to par. 2 ½ stars.