Why Black Mirror’s big twist has the series tied up in knots

Charlie Brooker’s acclaimed sci-fi satire changed gears with ‘Mazey Day’, an episode that bucked many time-tested series trends. The results couldn’t have been more disappointing, writes Louis Chilton

Picture this: Zazie Beetz in ‘Black Mirror’ (Netflix)

If you’ve seen Black Mirror, you’ll know it has a thing for twists. Charlie Brooker’s satirical sci-fi series has established itself as this century’s answer to Tales of the Unexpected: each episode doles out 40 to 90 minutes of grim techno-parable before – blam! – pulling the rug from beneath you. But even those familiar with Brooker’s penchant for narrative curveballs will have likely found themselves stumped by “Mazey Day”, the third episode in an uneven sixth season of Black Mirror, released on Netflix last week. In case the obvious needs stating: spoilers follow.

“Mazey Day” follows Bo (Zazie Beetz), a ruthless paparazzo who decides to quit the trade after the suicide of a celebrity of whom she had sold compromising pictures. After initially putting the sordid racket behind her, Bo is lured back by the promise of one last big scoop: photographs of buzzy young actor Mazey Day (Clara Rugaard), who has disappeared from a film set in the Czech Republic, prompting whispers of scandal and substance abuse. (There are shades of Britney Spears in the press’s relentless hounding.) After a tortuous hunt, Bo and a trio of other, even less scrupulous paps, find her at a secluded rehab facility. Coming face to face with the thespian shut away, it is revealed that she is not, in fact, an addict, but a werewolf. An actual, Hammer-horror-style, grab-your-pitchforks-and-silver-bullets werewolf. Who saw that coming? We get a few scenes of B-movie carnage, then, finally, the beast is taken down. Now human and cognisant again, lying in a pool of her own blood, Mazey Day resigns to shoot herself in the head, while Bo stands astride her, capturing everything through the lens.

The episode is a tonal and generic departure for Black Mirror, which usually traffics in horrors of an altogether more technological bent. It’s also – perhaps not unrelatedly – one of the series’ weakest satires. (The moral depravity of paparazzi culture was skewered with far greater insight and invention in the 2014 Jake Gyllenhaal film Nightcrawler.) In the past, Black Mirror has reflected – and even anticipated – news headlines; here, the story of a media feeding frenzy leading to a celebrity suicide inevitably brings to mind real-life tragedies such as the death of Love Island presenter Caroline Flack. But Black Mirror has nothing substantial to say about cases like these, where 21st-century technology and social media exacerbates the damage of personal struggles. Celebrities, like everyone else, deserve privacy – yes. The press can be predatory – true. Society’s appetite for exposé is unhealthy – duh. What else is new?