Monday 18 February 2013



Black Mirror, me and hype.
So, I keep catching these adverts that are all spooky and sinister and intimating psychologically thrilling plotlines. Excellent. Reel me in.
Great opening – a nice, awkward and real relationship (albeit with some slightly unhinged but now conveniently dead parents). Fine.
Question: why has the bloke got an Irish accent if he grew up in England? Even if both his parents had, he wouldn’t. I should know – my very English son surprises everyone, given that I have a recognisable twang myself. And by way of the latter, I love to hear a good regional accent, or better, an actor using their own regional accent in any programme, but can’t the writer spare one teeny plot point to make it credible?
So, he dies, wifey is distraught, friend recommends weirdo ‘project’ to help. Now here’s where the wee brain goes into hyperdrive. What is the purpose of the ‘project’? How is it supposed to help – as the friend said it would?
I’m imaging some sort of 21st century techno grief counselling: supply you with a shadow of your other half to comfort you while you process your loss, until you are in a place on that journey where to recognise them as a shadow is in itself, part of your healing. Then it all ends and you move on. Great job, excellent service.
No. They had to go and make marshmallow man: a rehydrated blow-up doll of your loved one. Eeew!
Once you’ve left him there to, em, inflate, hydrate…and when he’s done it well enough – shag!
Now, I’m working hard on ignoring the fact that blow-up dead other has returned as a plastic Aspie, and trying really hard to believe he doesn’t smell sickly sweet – which has to be better than sickly – even so…wanted to laugh when the sister commended her for moving on (in what must have been weeks if she failed to notice her pregnant state!)
It gets interesting for a while, as dummy absorbs and regurgitates more convincing bits of speech and ‘memory’. (Still not sure if I’m glad there is little video footage of me on the planet or not – who knows what marshmallow me would be?) And wifey has more to process and struggle with  -and when she takes him to Beachy Head (why does every location in a movie of the South have access to Beachy Head?? I’d have jumped Ramsgate or Dover equally, I know Hove and Bogner are a bit flat…) I finally believe her – and, no, his pretend crying would not have worked. It should have ended there. She should have made him jump – and if distraught, jumped herself. That might have meant something.
BIG CRINGE. The ‘epilogue’. Marshmallow man lives in attic and eats cake – but only on weekends!!!!!
No techno grief counselling working there then. I fear I expect too much of the future…