Black Mirror: The ranking of the best to worst episodes

That’s right, Black Mirror, your favourite dystopian nightmare is back, but this time it’s shifted the shoddy Channel 4 budget and brought out the big guns on Netflix with 6 brand new episodes. Here’s The Boar’s exclusive ranking on every episode in season three, ranked best to worst…

1) ‘Playtest’

This is by far the best episode in this new season, just because of the sheer unpredictability, proving that Charlie Brooker is the unrivalled king of dystopia in 2016.

Cooper, a quintessentially American traveller, finds himself becoming a paid guinea-pig for a type of augmented-reality video game he can see right before his eyes. An exclusive game in which he faces his greatest fears, Cooper only finds his deep-seeded rocky relationship with his mother coming to the fore in a completely unexpected Citizen Kane-style ending. This is Black Mirror at its best and is well up in my list of favourite episodes.

2) ‘Men Before Fire’

Technology is placed in a military setting here, as a young cadet with a military implant is told to kill ‘roaches’, blamed for pillaging nearby villages.

Roaches, so we’re told, are a type of zombie/monster hybrid. However, we’re later told this was just a cheap tactic for the American military to create automatons in a sinister bid to ‘clean’ the population. Sure, the episode is not as fast-paced as the rest, but for me this episode is brilliant in uncovering a little of what (could) go on behind closed doors. It’s not about the technology itself, but who uses it and for what means, which is the scariest prospect of it all.

3) ‘Hated in the Nation’

An hour and a half special, this last episode in the series takes the style of the bog-standard detective drama – but this episode is far from it. Exploring the basest nature of humanity by emphasising our constant need for public humiliation, DCI Karin Parke and her apprentice, Blue, set out to find a hacker who spends his time manipulating robot bees (originally designed to pollinate) so that they kill whomever the internet targets by the use of a distressing ‘#deathto’ hashtag. Yes, the ending isn’t completely unexpected, but it makes a nice change to the usual format of the show.

4) ‘Shut Up and Dance’

Might as well call it ‘White Bear 2’, right? While this show might not be set too far into the future, it explores the extremely relevant issue of being electronically blackmailed. A young teen boy is forced into completing what appeared to be mundane tasks, but these tasks become increasingly harrowing as the episode goes on. Again, the viewer is left confused at his/herself, as we honestly don’t know what to believe anymore.

5) ‘San Junipero’

This episode is by far an anomaly but a much needed one. In a world of death, destruction and self-loathing, Charlie Brooker finally creates a heart-warming story about the connection between two elderly women knowingly aware of the end of their human life, but beginning a new one in a world of virtual reality. While you don’t necessarily watch Black Mirror to feel all warm and lovely inside, I do think an episode like this is refreshing and restores just a smidgen of hope about the future of humanity.

6) ‘Nosedive’

While the concept was strong, the storyline was weak at most, as we see the predictable actions of Lacie Pound in which she becomes obsessed with ratings, in a world where you rate every encounter, every photo, every single aspect of your human life. Being limited to housing because of her 4.2 rating, Lacie sets out to become a 4.5 and thus starts her descent into madness. While the technological concept isn’t at all revolutionary and original as, say, Brooker’s ‘cookie’ concept of the ‘White Christmas’ episode, I definitely wasn’t on the edge of my seat and questioning if the seat really exists as I have been with previous episodes.