"You could roll this out worldwide..."
There hasn't been a bad episode of Black Mirror so far but, well, this is the closest we've come. While a collaboration between Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker may seem attractive it's nevertheless true that this is a script from (the excellent) Nathan Barley that didn't make the cut. So alarm bells are ringing already. And yet... the roots may be showing, and the message may be verging on mere "all politicians are corrupt, duh" fatuous nihilism, but this isn't a bad bedrock standard for a relatively poor episode.
The conceit- perhaps influenced by Ali G, H'Angus the Monkey being elected Mayor of Hartlepool and, less blatantly, by all that UKIP silliness that, in a rare positive consequence of Brexit, seems no longer to be a thing- is a rude cartoon bear (think the teddy bear Ronnie Corbett character from Bo Selecta) running in a by-election. There's a smarmy Tory, a sympathetic but careerist New Labour lady, and a lot of the cheap gags at the Lib Dems' expense that were fashionable in 2013. It's all very scattershot and isn't saying anything very deep, but it's watchable.
What elevates it, I think, is the eventual message (signposted by a sinister American from "the Agency") that political cynicism can be harnessed for authoritarian purposes and that things can get very, very dystopian. But such a thing could never happen in real life. Right?
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