The conceit of “Nosedive” is a little more complicated.
If that wasn’t enough, none other than Joe Wright-the filmmaker behind Atonement, Hanna, and last year’s Pan-is in the director’s chair. Based on an original idea from Brooker, it was written by Parks and Recreation creator and The Office alum Michael Schur and Rashida Jones, the actress/writer behind Celeste and Jesse Forever and the aforementioned Schur shows. The other episode shown at TIFF was “Nosedive,” which is certainly the most prestigious episode of the Season 3 bunch. So if you’re watching “San Junipero” and start to feel like you’ve lost interest, stick around a few more minutes-you won’t regret it. Moreover, the story itself is wonderfully original and tons of fun, so the way Harris threads the needle so to speak is a sight to behold, and he once again proves his knack for tugging at the heartstrings.
The “twist” is not the point, and Davis and Mbatha-Raw deliver a pair of terrific performances here that build to a surprisingly emotional climax. “San Junipero” begins promisingly enough, but fairly early on I began to feel like I had figured out the classic Black Mirror twist, and thus started to wonder if the rest of the episode would simply be underwhelming. Plenty of fantastic 80s pop songs are played, there's an arcade, and that’s all I’ll say about that. The first episode of Black Mirror Season 3 is titled “San Junipero”, and it was written by Brooker and directed by Black Mirror veteran Owen Harris, who was behind the Season 2 tearjerker “Be Right Back.” The opening conceit of “San Junipero” is simple: Halt and Catch Fire star Mackenzie Davis plays a mild-mannered, shy young woman walking the streets of an 80s town who wanders into a club and strikes up a friendship with a much more outgoing young girl named Kelly, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Part of the fun of Black Mirror is the aspect of discovery, so I’m going to be as vague as possible regarding specifics while hopefully offering some thoughts on the episodes as a whole. I’ll tell you right now I am not going into spoilers on either of these episodes, so fear not. And secondly, while Black Mirror is known for its bleakness, these first two installments are ever-so-slightly on the sunny side, offering a smidgen of optimism alongside a healthy dose of terrifying reality. Firstly, they both feature only American characters. These two episodes differ from previous Black Mirror installments in a couple of significant ways.
#THE BLACK MIRROR SAN JUNIPERO SERIES#
After seeing how well the British series performed, Netflix set creator Charlie Brooker to craft a new season’s worth of episodes to debut on Netflix, and two episodes just made their debut at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, where I got a chance to preview what Black Mirror Season 3 has in store. Review of Episodes San Junipero & Nosedive Review of Episodes San Junipero & Nosediveīlack Mirror, the Twilight Zone-esque series that caught the attention of folks everywhere when its first two seasons hit the streaming service Netflix, is returning for a third season now officially under the Netflix banner, and at least two episodes are at once classic Black Mirror and a bit of a departure.