Charlie Brooker has done pretty well for himself. His latest series of Black Mirror has been made for Netflix and the first episode of six all simultaneously released is directed by Joe ‘Atonement’ Wright and has all the gloss of a Hollywood production. It’s not laugh-out loud funny. In fact it feels so accurate it is more scary than satirical.
Nosedive is set is a crisp, clean, pastel-shaded non-specific near future when everyone is permanently rating everyone else on their smartphones. Get a low ranking and you become a social pariah. Get a high ranking and the world is your oyster – as long as your mark out of five doesn’t slip. It is all as shallow as hell but for anyone who has a social media account – which probably means everyone reading this – it already rings horribly true.
Bryce Dallas Howard plays Lacie, who is desperate to move to the Stepford Wife-ish Paradise Cove. But she has to get her score up to be eligible. Meanwhile her brother Ryan (James Norton) sees through the sham of the people who are constantly posting pictures of their awesome cinnamon buns online: “No-one is this happy. A two-year old with a balloon isn’t this happy.”
But somehow Lacie hits her target and her world starts to looks rosy. Just like interest rates though, ratings can go down as well as up and, sure enough, trouble is in store big-style when she is invited to make a speech at the wedding of old friend Naomi (Alice Eve).
It is pretty obvious early on what is going to happen, but Brooker’s well-observed script still delivers. And Nosedive looks good too, a mix of Truman Show sterility, computerised cars and vintage clothes, positioning this somewhere between the recent past and the imminent future.
Along the way we meet various characters with low ratings who are, unsurprisingly, the more real and sympathetic characters in this latterday morality tale. Lacie learns this truth the hard way. There are some moments that will make you smile, but this is no laugh-out-loud comedy. It feels far too real to be that funny.
Available on Netflix now.
