In this episode, an unhinged ride-share driver takes a hostage; his only demand is that he speak to Billy Bauer, the head of the massive social media company Smithereen. Yes, the company is called Smithereen, not Smithereens; that’s not the worst mistake this episode makes. But flawed as it is, this episode is still easily the best of Black Mirror’s fifth season; it keeps up a pretty breakneck pace and Hawes, who also directed the season three finale, Hated in the Nation, shows once again that he understands the rhythms of the police procedural right down to his bones. The cast is, honestly, what elevates a pretty standard script. A lot of the supporting characters are given very little time to establish their characters, but they come in hot and you feel like a lot of them have histories with each other outside of the show, particularly in the case of the British police characters. Ambreen Razia and Calum Callaghan have an easy chemistry as a pair of police officers who encounter the main character early on. Monica Dolan and Daniel Ings are both excellent as a hard-bitten, pragmatic CS and a preening hostage negotiator, respectively; Ings, in particular, has very little screen time, but even when he’s just standing in the background, he exudes a kind of slimy arrogance. Damson Idris is good as the jittery hostage. The episode also does really well at building up the Billy Bauer character so that you can’t wait to see him and also have genuinely no idea what he’s going to be like; Topher Grace, hot off his best performance ever in BlackKklansman, gives another really good one here as Bauer. But the episode really belongs to Andrew Scott who is absolutely revelatory as Chris, the gunman with an ax to grind; it’s a really intense performance with about a million different notes to play, with shifts that happen in a matter of seconds and Scott doesn’t hit a single false note. He really saves the ending, in my opinion, which is where the episode really falters on a script level; it isn’t that the writing is bad exactly in terms of what we do get, but it’s disappointing that the reason Chris wants to speak to Bauer is so predictable. Ultimately, it doesn’t even get to Bauer on a personal level and that leaves the character as a largely symbolic one, which, okay, fine, but I really wish the mystery had a more surprising or layered resolution. Still, Scott’s performance is really a masterclass in that phone conversation, so it still works as it is. Maybe I’m as positive on it as I am because it is kind of a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind here in season five, but whatever, I guess. I really enjoyed this episode and, while it still lands pretty far down on my ranking of the whole series, it is, at least, a run at the kind of things that once made this series so genuinely great. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – fast-paced episode papers over some serious flaws with its high energy and, most especially, a batch of fantastic performances, particularly from lead Andrew Scott. 3 ½ stars.