Black Mirror: Ranking Every Episode From Worst To Best

4. White Christmas

Black Mirror White Christmas
Netflix

The most successful Christmas stories tend to be warm, sweet, and heartfelt, capturing the true spirit of the season. Black Mirror isn’t an obvious fit, and yet the pair goes together like pigs and blankets.

In a horribly, brilliantly dark Yuletide tale, we find two men (played by Jon Hamm and Rafe Spall) stranded at a remote outpost in a snow-covered wilderness. They tell each other tales to pass the time, spinning into three mini-stories.

Hamm and Spall make for a superb double-act, each making their characters complicated humans who retain your sympathy while doing terrible things, which is one of Black Mirror’s greatest strengths. Continuing those strengths are how it tackles our reliance on technology and the burgeoning use of artificial intelligence, making a suitably scary festive story, and the separate strands all start to coalesce by the end.

Layering twists upon twists, the episode builds to one of Black Mirror’s greatest ever endings, and you’ll never listen to I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday the same way again.

[JH]

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NCTJ-qualified journalist. Most definitely not a racing driver. Drink too much tea; eat too much peanut butter; watch too much TV. Sadly only the latter paying off so far. A mix of wise-old man in a young man's body with a child-like wonder about him and a great otherworldly sensibility.

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Writer. Mumbler. Only person on the internet who liked Spider-Man 3