Black Mirror: 15 Million Merits

Channel 4
This comes from husband and wife Charlie Brooker and Kanak Huq, which one is the husband and which the wife I’m not sure. This reminded me a bit of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Not the 1935 book but the 1969 film with Jane Fonda. The first part of Black Mirror is the best, when the programme’s hi-tech credentials are established. Daniel Kaluuya and Jessica Brown Findlay are locked into a mirrored world that throws commercials at them as they sleep and eat and do most things. Watching these adverts allows them merits, which can be exchanged for other hi-tech goodies. The ultimate is a chance to enter Hot Shot . If you can imagine the X-factor then imagine something else then you’ve went too far. It is the X-factor, but a hi-tech version of panellists. The ultimate prize is to escape the hamster-wheel existence in which peddling a hi-tech bike in an endless routine segues into a They Shoot Horses as the X-factor. There can only be one winner and it’s not the viewer. A brave attempt, but…one thing that did stick was the song ostensibly song by Findlay. That burrowed into my head like a meme.