Filed under:By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.After a hiatus of a few years — season 5 premiered back in 2019 — Black Mirror is back, with a five-episode season that’s streaming now on Netflix. As always, this season is an anthology, with each episode exploring different ways technology could impact our lives (usually for the worse). Or, you know, exactly the kind of thing The Verge staff is really into. Because each episode stands on its own, we’ll be exploring them individually, with different writers tackling different stories. There are five episodes in total — “Joan Is Awful,” “Loch Henry,” “Beyond the Sea,” “Mazey Day,” and “Demon 79” — and you can keep up with all of our coverage right here.TODAY, Two hours agoAdi Robertson“Beyond the Sea” is the rarest breed of Black Mirror episode: the kind driven by empathy. Carried by a cast that includes Aaron Paul, Josh Hartnett, and Kate Mara, it’s equal parts character study and Twilight Zone creeping horror — a story focused less on the series’ typical social commentary than on three people whose impossible situation leads to an inevitably tragic end.The episode is set in an alternate 1969 where two astronauts are midway through a six-year mission. Although their bodies are stuck in a cramped spacecraft, they spend most of their time inhabiting a pair of lifelike telepresence “replicas” on Earth. David (Hartnett) maintains an idyllic life with his wife and two children, taking his Neil Armstrong-esque celebrity graciously. Cliff (Paul) has a far more brittle relationship with his taciturn son and his lonely wife Lana (Mara), who he’s uprooted to live in a remote farmhouse. The mission proceeds smoothly until a horrific tragedy destroys David’s family and his replica. And to keep him from despair, Cliff lets David begin taking short jaunts in his body back home.TODAY, Two hours agoAndrew WebsterWhile Black Mirror started out as a series exploring the myriad terrifying ways technology could impact our lives, it has since grown into a more general genre anthology. It’s nice when episodes have that techno focus, but it’s no longer a necessity. Case in point: “Demon 79,” a season 6 story that’s pure classic horror homage. Its premise wouldn’t be out of place in a collection like Tales From the Crypt or Cabinet of Curiosities. But don’t let the lack of Black Mirror-ness dissuade you — this episode is a blast of Hitchcockian scares with just the right kind of twist.“Demon 79” — which was directed by Toby Haynes and written by Ms. Marvel’s Bisha K. Ali and Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker — is centered on Nida (Anjana Vasan), a woman living a quiet, boring life in a small town in 1970s northern England. She works as a clerk at a shoe shop, doesn’t drink or ever really go out, and is constantly subjected to overt racism from her co-workers: a boss asking her to eat lunch somewhere else because of the smell or a fellow clerk openly reading anti-immigration pamphlets at work. She never speaks up for herself, just meekly goes about her day. But she has sharp, violent fantasies about murdering those who wrong her, including a local creep who’s become infamous for strangling his wife.Jun 7Monica ChinThe results, according to creator and showrunner Charlie Booker, were “shit”. The product it spit out amounted to a mashup of previous Black Mirror synopses, Booker tells Empire, though it did help him spot some of the clichés in his previous work. South Park actually did a ChatGPT-cowritten episode in its most recent season, FWIW. It was pretty funny, but “shit” would also be an appropriate term.[Empire]May 31Emma RothBlack Mirror’s sixth season will land on Netflix on June 15th. The streamer revealed the release date in a new trailer on Wednesday, which gives us a more detailed look at what to expect from the mind-bending series, as opposed to the teaser we saw last month.The upcoming installment will consist of five new episodes, including one where a woman realizes that a streaming platform that looks — and sounds — a lot like Netflix created an adaptation based on her life. This particular story is called “Joan Is Awful” and stars Schitt’s Creek’s Annie Murphy as well as Michael Cera and Salma Hayek.Apr 26Jay PetersWe knew a sixth season of Netflix’s Black Mirror was on the way, but now, we know a lot more about it: a new teaser trailer shared Wednesday reveals that the season will be out in June and features big actors like Aaron Paul, Kate Mara, and Salma Hayek.In a blog post, Netflix is promising that the season will be the show’s “most unpredictable” yet. The company isn’t saying why that is just yet, but a quote from Charlie Brooker, the show’s creator, sheds a bit of light on what you can look forward to.May 16, 2022Charles Pulliam-MooreNo matter how much time passes between Black Mirror’s seasons, the series always manages to feel just as unsettlingly prescient as when it first began airing. It isn’t exactly surprising that Netflix is working on yet another installment of the tech-focused dystopian series, but it seems as if our next taste of Black Mirror’s going to be a little different than what we’ve seen before.Variety reports that Netflix has greenlit Black Mirror and is currently in pre-production for its sixth series — the details for which are largely being kept quiet. Unlike the interactive Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and fifth series that came before it, Black Mirror’s anthological sixth series is reported to consist of more episodes and be more “cinematic in scope,” which is likely a sign of the show taking even bigger swings. There’s currently no word on when Black Mirror’s sixth season is set to begin production. / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your inbox daily.The Verge is a vox media network© 2023 Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved