BLACK MIRROR.

• Author: Britschgi, Christian
• Position: TV - Television program review

The latest installment of Netflix's sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror casts its typically skeptical eye on how technology and human nature mix and clash. The six episodes of season four--each a dark but compellingly told stand-alone story--explore the darker side of nerd fandom, the trials and tribulations of high-tech helicopter parenting, the possibility of homicidal robot dogs, and the promise of 99.9 percent accurate Tinder matches.

Black Mirror's simple, self-contained treatments of slightly futuristic but eminently believable technologies flesh out the deeply relatable human desires and insecurities of both the show's characters and its viewers. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in this season's second episode, "Arkangel," in which a terrified single mother implants a chip in her daughter's head that lets the mom not just see the world from the girl's perspective but also censor it.

This scheme goes terribly wrong, of course, but not because the chip radically...