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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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.