Charlie Brooker

White Bear played out like a waking nightmare

Given that my paranoia levels are pretty high at the worst of times, it wasn't surprising "White Bear" (C4), the latest in Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror adventures in psychological techno terror, had me checking the cat for secret microchips. Actually, those big green eyes look a bit like tiny cameras...

The second of Charlie Brooker's creepily believable trilogy of techno-future tales casts its chilly spell from the moment Lenora Crichlow (Being Human) opens her eyes as haunted, hunted Victoria.

Waking to the debris of what looks to have been a suicidal night before, Victoria can't remember anything about anything - why do TV screens keep playing white noise at her? And why does a strange cipher keep flashing into her mind?

As she steps outdoors, she finds herself in a world where looking at any kind of screen is the most dangerous thing you can do. And where onlookers would sooner point their phone at somebody who's running for their life than try to help...

Nothing is quite what it seems in this latest Charlie Brooker drama. At the very least, it's a bravura feat of sustained rug pulling. At various points, you'll feel like you're watching a shoddy 28 Days Later knock-off, a heavy-handed treatise on our increasing capacity to observe and be controlled, an experiment in perspective and audience sympathy or something else entirely. Ambitious, even audacious, then.

Lenora Crichlow is superb as terrified, traumatised Victoria, a girl who awakes in distress to find she can remember nothing of her life. When she leaves the house, her day gets worse. Anyone who isn't physically attacking her is cheerfully filming her plight on their smartphones. But then salvation arrives. Or does it? Saying too much more would spoil the fun. But suffice to say, this is a black mirror indeed.

White Bear is another work of dark and twisted genius

It's another work of dark and twisted genius from Charlie Brooker.

Ha, Black Mirror (Channel 4)! Like The Hunger Games plus The Truman Show plus The Gadget Show plus Jeremy Kyle plus Big Brother plus Dawn of the Dead plus Shaun of the Dead plus Groundhog Day plus a lot of morons with phones, all snorted into Charlie Brooker's head where it can fester and go off a bit and gather darkness ... before getting vomited out - projectile vomited - on to the screen.

I actually preferred the first one. It was more human, and felt more of an individual drama in its own right. This is more brutal and bleaker. Nastier. And still probably about the most imaginative television around right now. A big blinding flash of futuresplat.

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The second series of Charlie Brooker's technology-based, self-contained dramas Black Mirror kicked off with a chiller set in the near future entitled Be Right Back. Hayley Atwell stars as Martha, a bereaved girlfriend who assuages her grief with the help of a useful telephone app that draws upon the departed's online footprint to offer a virtual form of communication beyond the grave.

Brooker's trademark cynical sense of humour is noticeable by its absence as the first 30 minutes concentrates on Martha's loneliness, desperation and unbearable sense of loss. But then things take a distinct turn for the sci-fi, with Martha taking delivery of what can best be described as a grow-in-the-bath android to give her late boyfriend actual physical form.

Much like Martha and her android, Brooker walked the idea around for a while, realised it was going nowhere and ultimately opted for abandonment. To the writer's credit he resisted the temptation to take the tale into the realms of terror, although I can't help wondering if this would have provided a far more satisfying conclusion than sticking the poor surrogate up in the loft.

But for all its flaws, Black Mirror remains compulsive viewing. Well made, well acted and never less than imaginative, it is one of the few dramas around that explores ideas rather than scenarios, employing a dramatically diverse palette of tones in the process.

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