Ranking All 13 Episodes Of ‘Black Mirror’ So Far

5. “The National Anthem” (Season 1, Episode 1)
The anthology series had fallen out of favor in recent years, but if you’re looking to get some attention for your premiere episode of a new one, it turns out that you can get a ton of attention by kidnapping a royal princess and getting the Prime Minister to have sex with a pig, as “The National Anthem” involves. The show’s premiere episode, written by Brooker and directed by Otto Bathurst, has a somewhat bizarre premise: a beloved royal princess (Lydia Wilson) is kidnapped, and the perpetrator releases a video saying that she will be killed unless the Prime Minister, Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear) has sex with a live pig on live television (an act that, famously, proved unexpectedly prescient when rumors were released in 2015 that then-Prime Minister David Cameron had put his dick in a dead pig’s head as part of a university initiation ritual). But as strange as the set-up is, the genius of “National Anthem” is that, while there’s a thick streak of dark comedy, it takes the conceit utterly seriously, from the horror of Callow (in one of Kinnear’s best performances) as he contemplates what he has to do, to the public’s reaction, making jokes and demanding he goes through with it, only to become quickly horrified (but unable to tear their eyes away) when the deed is done. It was also one of the first dramas to take social media seriously, and its exploration of the ways that it can drive public opinion like a mob remains prescient and disquieting. That it could take such a difficult story and execute it so perfectly was a sign of how good the show was going to become.

4. “The Entire History Of You” (Season 1, Episode 3)
To date the only “Black Mirror” episode not credited at least in part to Brooker (he has story credit on “Nosedive,” but didn’t write the teleplay), “The Entire History Of You” was the first episode to directly examine technology’s impact on our personal relationships, something which has led to many of the best stories, as we’ll see below. Written by Jesse Armstrong (of “Peep Show,” “Fresh Meat” and “The Thick Of It” fame) and directed by Brian Welsh, it’s set in a world where almost everyone has a ‘grain’ in their head, which records and lets them replay their memories. Liam (Toby Kebbell) is in a happy marriage with Fion (Jodie Whittaker), but at a dinner party, starts to worry about her past relationship with the obnoxiously charming Jonas (Tom Cullen). The metaphor is simple but elegant, and a multi-purpose one: what if your hazy memory could be replayed crystal clear? Would it necessarily provide the answers? Would you end up just reliving the same moments over and over again? Would it be possible to live in the present at all? It’s easy to tie this to the way that Facebook in particular has changed our relationships — obsessively reliving old photos and videos, or suspiciously eyeing the person who keeps liking all your partner’s Instagram posts. But Armstrong successfully makes the technology a symptom, not a cause of this: Liam and Fion’s relationship breakdown (captured by some superb turns, particularly by Kebbell) is down to jealousy, which is exacerbated, not caused, by their grains. It doesn’t completely stick the landing — hints that Liam’s suspicions about the parentage of his child are correct sort of work against the theme, we’d argue — but it’s still powerful stuff that struck quite a nerve for many.

3. “Be Right Back” (Season 2, Episode 1)
A sort of spiritual successor to “The Entire History Of You” (and predecessor to “San Junipero,” which like this was directed by Owen Harris), “Be Right Back” might not be the show’s very best relationship episode, but it’s certainly the most wrenchingly sad, and probably the tightest and most focused episode the series has ever done. Hayley Atwell stars as Martha, a young woman who’s just moved to a remote seaside home with her partner Ash (Domhnall Gleeson), only for him to be killed in a car accident soon after. Martha’s devastated, and even when a friend tells her about a new system that is able to digitally recreate the deceased through their social media profiles and other digital communication, she initially rejects the idea, but after learning that she’s pregnant by Ash, begins to experiment with the service, which initially sends her emails, then digitally recreates his voice, and then even putting him in a synthetic body. But while it proves an initial band-aid for her grief, it quickly becomes apparent that the new Ash doesn’t quite get it right. The episode’s a more incisive look than most at the downsides of social media, in this case perfectly capturing how our online profiles never quite match up to how we are in real life, but like the best episodes in general, this works because it’s not just talking about technology, but about people — the devastation of grief, the difficulty of parenting on your own, the way your memory can valorize a lost partner, how being too eager to please can sabotage a relationship. Barely ever leaving the farm house, the near-claustrophobia ends up being an absolute boon, in part because it gives us more time with the two leads, who are both wonderful here, particularly Gleeson’s subtle delineation between the real and synthetic Ashes.

2. “Hated In The Nation” (Season 3, Episode 6)
The super-sized finale to the third season (at 89 minutes, it’s the longest episode to date) seems on the surface to be a less ambitious installment than some of the recent run — Brooker’s described it as an homage to Scandi-noir thrillers like “The Bridge” or “The Killing,” and lord knows we’re not exactly lacking for police procedurals these days. But it ends up providing a perfect frame for the story that he wants to tell here, unfolding an utterly gripping mystery which packs a whopping punch. Falling somewhere between “The X-Files” and Jon Ronson’s “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” “Hated In the Nation” (directed by James Hawes) sees luddite detective Karin Parke (Kelly Macdonald) paired with the younger, tech-savvy Blue (Faye Marsay) after a controversial columnist is killed. After a second victim, a rapper who insulted a child on live TV, is found, they quickly work out that the deaths are linked to a Twitter game where users vote on a victim using the hashtag #DeathTo, with robotic bees used to carry out the crime. But whoever the perpetrator is might have a darker plan in mind… Brooker (who parodied similar crime dramas with his enjoyably silly, “Naked Gun”-ish comedy “A Touch Of Cloth”) takes to the form brilliantly, and Hawes shoots and paces it beautifully, capturing a near-future that’s just a little off-kilter, but is still essentially our world. The whole cast (also including Benedict Wong as a mysterious government agent, and Swedish actor Jonas Karlsson as a tech genius) are excellent, but Macdonald and Marsay are particularly good, bringing real energy and pathos to characters who could have been tropes if they were just a little less well written and performed (Brooker’s already hinted that they could return, which is excellent news). And it builds to a final twist that, unlike some of the similar curveballs across Season 3, feels earned and utterly devastating. It’s nihilistic in some respects, but by placing against the basic goodness of Parke and Blue (and in some respects by making the villain an analogue for himself), Brooker finds a way to make his more dystopic ideas feel palatable without softening them.

1. “San Junipero” (Season 3, Episode 4)
We’re used to “Black Mirror” doing many things — horrifying us, making us laugh darkly, making us feel a little bit sick. We’re not used to seeing it making us swoon or making us cry, which are two things that “San Junipero,” Brooker’s crowning achievement so far and the easy highlight of Season 3, managed. Directed again by “Be Right Back” helmer Owen Harris, it seems at first to be the first episode set in the past, as the shy, nerdy Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis of “The Martian” and “Halt & Catch Fire”) comes to a California beach party town of San Junipero, where she meets the outgoing Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who flirts with her, but Yorkie tells her she’s engaged. A week later, she returns, and they hook up, but after that, she can’t find her, and as she jumps through time looking for her, it becomes clear that we’re in some kind of online game, a sort of nostalgic “World Of Warcraft,” and Brooker’s script further drip-feeds revelations about the nature of Yorkie, Kelly and the other inhabitants of “San Junipero” until the very end. But the sci-fi plotting is secondary here to the woozy, neon-soaked atmosphere that Harris conjures (aided by a great Clint Mansell score and some sly song choices including The Smiths’ “Girlfriend In A Coma” and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” that stay just this side of being too on-the-nose), and to the finely-honed love story between the two characters. It’s in some ways a follow-up to “Be Right Back,” tackling the idea of an online afterlife, but it does so much besides, making a case in some ways for the value of nostalgia, escapism and fantasy, and proving surprisingly affecting on coming out, and dreams of the lives we might have led. Beautifully brought to life by the two lead actresses, among the best we have at the minute, and getting great showcases here, it feels more profound than any episode to date about humanity (not just technology), in part because it’s atypically optimistic, while not letting the more troubling implications of its conceit slide either. One of the best bits of TV anywhere this year.

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