A self-referential journey into familiar territory

ON Black Mirror, the future isn't a boot stamping onto a human face forever, as George Orwell said it would be. It’s a little white pad stuck to the side of someone’s noggin - a kind of AirPod for the temple, sending all who wear it into a digital trance, their bodies slack, their eyes milky white.

- AA DOWD

No fewer than three of the six new episodes of Black Mirror on Netflix deploy some version of creator Charlie Brooker’s favourite portable VR accessory, which previously plugged characters into a simulated 1980s paradise, a hyperrealistic fighting game and a resentful geek’s re-creation of the final frontier.

Fans of this dependably withering sci-fi anthology might see that as tantalising hints of continuity - an Easter egg implying that Brooker’s various visions of the nightmare tomorrow are less self-contained than they once appeared. But, as is often the case with Black Mirror, a more pessimistic outlook is possible: is the recurring appearance of that little doohickey further proof that Brooker, our resident small-screen Orwell, might be running out of ideas?

He's certainly short on new ones in season 7, maybe the thinnest shard of Black Mirror yet. The sense of déjà vu goes beyond any one technological gimmick; this time, whole premises have been copied and pasted. Perhaps you've heard that the show is not so boldly going where it’s gone before? Along with a much-ballyhooed return trek to the USS Callister, you can expect a quasi-sequel to Bandersnatch, minus the novelty of choosing your own adventure.

Brooker, who as usual wrote or co-wrote every episode of the season, gets his most trenchant (and, relatedly, most heavy-handed) observations out of the way early with Common People, starring Rashida Jones as a teacher who discovers that the miracle implant that has cured her brain cancer comes with a hefty monthly fee.