Every Season 1 Black Mirror Episode Ranked Worst To Best

Season one of Black Mirror displays perhaps its boldest and most controversial storytelling in the show's history, and that's just the opening scene. As we see the Prime Minister discover he must have live televised sex with a pig in order to save a member of the Royal Family, television was never quite the same again.

Without this groundbreaking first episode and incredibly strong start we would never have seen the show become the Netflix hit which A-List actors wanted to be a part of and was watched worldwide by millions of viewers. Black Mirror went from cult classic to global phenomenon seemingly overnight.

Now nearly 10 years later the phrase "that's a bit Black Mirror, isn't it?" has become a shortcut for summing up the state of our world, which more than ever seems to be veering ever closer to the disturbingly twisted dystopia which Charlie Brooker has created.

With this bleak thought in mind, find out which episode was worthy of fifteen million merits and which one just left us staring blankly at the black mirror in front of us...

The Entire History of You has a fantastic yet simple concept at its heart: we all have a grain implanted in us which allows us to replay and save all our memories. In classic Black Mirror style it is only a few minutes into the episode when it becomes clear how this innovative piece of technology will harm humanity and our protagonist.

An anomaly in Black Mirror, this is the only episode of the series where creator Charlie Brooker did not have any story credit. Jesse Armstrong, of Peep Show and recent smash hit Succession fame, who penned the episode chose to focus on the impact of the grain within the lives of husband and wife Liam and Ffion rather than the worldwide impact of the new technology, something which the previous episodes explored.

This may be to the detriment of the script as their troubled relationship feels less interesting than questions of how the device has altered society. Brooker admitted there was an early idea "about people going to cinemas to have clandestine conversations or affairs, because the recording technology is automatically disabled on copyright grounds." However, this sadly had to be scrapped due to budget and not being able to narrow down the story's focus.

Perhaps the main problem with the story is that our protagonist Liam is an unlikable character from his first scene, obsessively replaying a job interview and forcing his wife to weigh in on it. After he starts drinking he is only more insufferable, whether it be threatening his wife's ex boyfriend with a broken bottle or verbally interrogating his wife about him. The plot is interesting but of all the situations Black Mirror could have examined this dangerous technology in, it feels rather stale.