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Black Mirror’s ‘Playtest’ Brings Fear to Life

The second episode of the new season is a twisty, tense horror story about an immersive video game that can detect your darkest fears.

David Sims
October 21, 2016 1 more free article this month more free article Sign in Subscribe Now Netflix

Sophie Gilbert and David Sims will be discussing the new season of Netflix’s Black Mirror, considering alternate episodes. The reviews contain spoilers; don’t read further than you’ve watched. See all of their coverage here.

Sophie, I’d call “Nosedive” a solid 3 out of 5—decent premise, nice execution, but just a little half-baked in terms of plot. Black Mirror is a show that excels at simple world-building, and I loved the little details of that episode’s world, the pastels, the cutesy designs, the uniform minimalism that felt inherently obnoxious. (What else would excel in a world of consensus ratings but the aggressively bland?) But Black Mirror also can suffer from its lack of detail, since each episode is focused on one particular quirk of technology, and “Nosedive” felt too repetitive in that regard, drilling into its initial pitch for three-quarters of the episode and finishing the story exactly where you might have guessed.

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