Over the first four series of Black Mirror, there have been so many great technologies that we have seen abused and come to back to bite civilisation in some way. Few have been quite as interesting as the ‘Cookie’ first seen in White Christmas, a device that stores a digital replication of a person’s consciousness and has them carry out mundane tasks for eternity. It’s a terrifying concept, and one that’s ripe for further exploration. Cookie’s have shown up briefly in other Black Mirror episodes, but the Series Four finale, Black Museum, is the first time a technology has been brought back for another go around.
Whilst waiting for her car to recharge, Nish (Letitia Wright) visits the nearby ‘Black Museum’, a collection of criminal objects with sordid histories, collected and maintained by Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). Whilst on the tour, Rolo explains the stories behind a selection of the museum’s artefacts, whilst promising Nish a grand finale unlike anything she’s seen before.
Like White Christmas before it, Black Museum’s web of interconnected stories certainly make for an entertainingly bleak Black Mirror experience, but it’s best experienced as a veteran of the show rather than a newcomer. Like White Christmas, it’s a culmination of multiple elements we’ve seen before, and it expands on those ideas in meaningful ways. Without having seen episodes like San Junipero (and as previously mentioned, White Christmas), a lot of the story will be lost on you because there are explicit call-backs to them. It acts as a melting pot of ideas from the series past, and for a long-time fan it’s really great to see so much stuff being subtly referenced or outright continued in Black Museum from its previous appearance, but that does come at the cost of having a prior knowledge entry requirement.
Whilst waiting for her car to recharge, Nish (Letitia Wright) visits the nearby ‘Black Museum’, a collection of criminal objects with sordid histories, collected and maintained by Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). Whilst on the tour, Rolo explains the stories behind a selection of the museum’s artefacts, whilst promising Nish a grand finale unlike anything she’s seen before.
Like White Christmas before it, Black Museum’s web of interconnected stories certainly make for an entertainingly bleak Black Mirror experience, but it’s best experienced as a veteran of the show rather than a newcomer. Like White Christmas, it’s a culmination of multiple elements we’ve seen before, and it expands on those ideas in meaningful ways. Without having seen episodes like San Junipero (and as previously mentioned, White Christmas), a lot of the story will be lost on you because there are explicit call-backs to them. It acts as a melting pot of ideas from the series past, and for a long-time fan it’s really great to see so much stuff being subtly referenced or outright continued in Black Museum from its previous appearance, but that does come at the cost of having a prior knowledge entry requirement.
As with White Christmas, the stories that Rolo tells Nish build to a crescendo for their own storyline. Both actors are at the top of their game here and present some of the most compelling performances in Black Mirror history. Hodge plays Rolo as some kind of ex-carnie type, a fast talker whose showmanship distracts you from his moral ambiguity, a slight of hand trick that he’s gotten far too comfortable with. Wright meanwhile plays Nish as this seeker of thrills and knowledge; she relishes in uncovering the macabre, and unlike most of Rolo’s patrons is intelligent enough to ask the kind of questions that keep him on his toes. He’s enjoying having her around as much as she’s enjoying hearing the stories.
When it does all come to a head in the final act it then feels a little underwhelming. It doesn’t use the established technology in as interesting a way as one would hope, and the conflict that is created between Nish and Rolo feels artificial. Where the old pulling the rug out from underneath you with a last-minute twist cleverly planted in the stories worked in White Christmas, here it feels perfunctory, like it’s just going through the necessary motions to get to where it needs to for the story to end.
The stories meanwhile are fun, bitesized Black Mirror tales that are too short for their own episodes but are malleable enough to be strung together. Rolo’s tales concern experimental medical technology he offered to people for free in exchange for gathering test result data and build a better final product. First up is Dr. Dawson (Daniel Lapaine) who gets an implant that allows him to feel the physical sensations of anybody wearing the transmitter. This allows him to diagnose and treat patients effectively, without them even needing to be able to communicate with him. However, Dawson becomes addicted to the sensations and seeks progressively more extreme ways to get greater pleasure from the increased fear and pain.
This is a neat little body horror tale that doesn’t do anything particularly new with the crazed surgeon storyline that’s been done to death, but the technological twist afforded by Black Mirror does open up a world of moral debate about the applied effectiveness of the technology for patients weighed against the psychological cost of the user.
Rolo’s second story concerns Jack (Aldis Hodge), and Carrie (Alexandra Roach), a young couple of following the birth of their child is torn apart by Carrie becoming comatose. Roplo offers the two of them the opportunity to live together forever by implanting Carrie’s consciousness inside Jack’s brain, effectively meaning she can see and hear everything in Jack’s life, and she can communicate with him as his conscience. It goes about as well as you expect and is a nice riff on the idea of living in each other’s pockets and growing resentful of each other, but with the added extra of not being able to get rid of one another once you’ve drifted apart. Like the cookie storyline from White Christmas, it presents this great moral dilemma of keeping someone alive but stripping them of their free will and keeping them confined in a way that they have no way to escape.
When it does all come to a head in the final act it then feels a little underwhelming. It doesn’t use the established technology in as interesting a way as one would hope, and the conflict that is created between Nish and Rolo feels artificial. Where the old pulling the rug out from underneath you with a last-minute twist cleverly planted in the stories worked in White Christmas, here it feels perfunctory, like it’s just going through the necessary motions to get to where it needs to for the story to end.
The stories meanwhile are fun, bitesized Black Mirror tales that are too short for their own episodes but are malleable enough to be strung together. Rolo’s tales concern experimental medical technology he offered to people for free in exchange for gathering test result data and build a better final product. First up is Dr. Dawson (Daniel Lapaine) who gets an implant that allows him to feel the physical sensations of anybody wearing the transmitter. This allows him to diagnose and treat patients effectively, without them even needing to be able to communicate with him. However, Dawson becomes addicted to the sensations and seeks progressively more extreme ways to get greater pleasure from the increased fear and pain.
This is a neat little body horror tale that doesn’t do anything particularly new with the crazed surgeon storyline that’s been done to death, but the technological twist afforded by Black Mirror does open up a world of moral debate about the applied effectiveness of the technology for patients weighed against the psychological cost of the user.
Rolo’s second story concerns Jack (Aldis Hodge), and Carrie (Alexandra Roach), a young couple of following the birth of their child is torn apart by Carrie becoming comatose. Roplo offers the two of them the opportunity to live together forever by implanting Carrie’s consciousness inside Jack’s brain, effectively meaning she can see and hear everything in Jack’s life, and she can communicate with him as his conscience. It goes about as well as you expect and is a nice riff on the idea of living in each other’s pockets and growing resentful of each other, but with the added extra of not being able to get rid of one another once you’ve drifted apart. Like the cookie storyline from White Christmas, it presents this great moral dilemma of keeping someone alive but stripping them of their free will and keeping them confined in a way that they have no way to escape.
Obviously due to the scope of the episode it is one of the longer Black Mirror tales, clocking in at just shy of seventy minutes. It does keep the pace steady though, and as previously mentioned the great performances from Hodge and Wright make the whole thing feel like a breeze. Due to the increased scope of the episode, and when looking back at Series Four on the whole, it does seem as though a lot of the budget went to making this episode which does seem a shame when you consider the general lower quality of Series Four. Perhaps the increased budget for this and USS Calister were not the wisest ideas when episodes like Arkangel and Metalhead probably could have used a little more cash to properly explore their respective ideas.
Whilst it certainly has its faults, Black Museum is one of the strongest episodes of Series Four. For Black Mirror veterans it offers up so many great call-backs and references, tying together these seemingly disparate worlds in a fittingly weird and macabre way. The strong central performances anchor the black tales nicely, and though the ending feels somewhat uninspired it’s not exactly unsatisfying.
I wouldn’t recommend newcomers to the show starting here, this is absolutely an episode for long-time Black Mirror fans only. But once you’ve seen enough to take a trip to the Black Museum you should find that it won’t disappoint, even if it won’t leave you flabbergasted.
Whilst it certainly has its faults, Black Museum is one of the strongest episodes of Series Four. For Black Mirror veterans it offers up so many great call-backs and references, tying together these seemingly disparate worlds in a fittingly weird and macabre way. The strong central performances anchor the black tales nicely, and though the ending feels somewhat uninspired it’s not exactly unsatisfying.
I wouldn’t recommend newcomers to the show starting here, this is absolutely an episode for long-time Black Mirror fans only. But once you’ve seen enough to take a trip to the Black Museum you should find that it won’t disappoint, even if it won’t leave you flabbergasted.