There was a bit of a Facebook hoo-ha about my review of the first instalment of Charlie Brooker's new Netflix series because I said it wasn't funny enough. Maybe the comments had a point. While there were a few warped witticisms in the first tale Nosedive, the next self-contained story, Playtest, is truly the stuff of dystopian nightmares.

The drama starts with shaggy dropout Cooper (Wyatt Russell) sneaking out of his family home to go on a mini-gap year. We soon see him whizzing around the usual backpacking stop-offs before pitching up in London where he hooks up – via online dating of course – with Sonja (Hannah John-Kamen). All is looking rosy until his credit card is declined and he has to find a way of making some quick cash...

Fortunately, for reasons which aren't quite clear (but may be to do with his canny use of a job-finding App), he lands a lucky gig roadtesting out a new computer game where you have to confront your own imagination. Sonja is a gaming journalist and says that if he can get any pictures of the new device he could make a mint. It is never quite explained why Sonja doesn't just apply for the trial run herself. Maybe I missed something. Or maybe she would be indentified and rejected because of her job.

Anyway, Cooper ends up in a plush country house in the English countryside and before you can say superfast broadband he has had an implant injected into his neck/brain so that his night in a haunted house becomes truly immersive. But don't worry, he is told, he can say "stop" at any time. Yeah, right. And when creepy giant spiders and images from his past start flying at him the temptation to cut and run become overpowering.

But...and this is where Charlie Brooker gets clever...what is real and what is imagined? Can he really quit by saying stop? As with Nosedive it's not an entirely original narrative. I'm not a big gamer but to me it recalled David Fincher's movie The Game, where Michael Douglas could never quite work out what was really happening. The director here, Dan Trachtenberg, who helmed 10 Cloverfield Lane, gives everything a sinister shade, even when Cooper is at his Owen Wilson-ish jolliest.

Brooker seems to be homing in on a future for games that may be problematic as they are forced to get more sophisticated in a fiercely compeititve market. The tech world collides with the real world and it is not nice. The horror here might all be in Cooper's mind, but unlike old school games, it can now hurt him physically.

I don't want to give away too many spoilers. Needless to say the frights are clearly there on the screen, whether they are in Cooper's mind or not. There are moments that will make you jump, images that will haunt you long after the credits have rolled. As a former game reviewer this is clearly an area Brooker knows well. As a viewer you don't need to be a gamer to appreciate Playtest. In fact if you are a gamer you may be frustrated that you didn't get the chance to try out this exclusive game yourself. Then again, when you see what happens to Cooper you may be glad you are watching someone else go through this.

Read a review of Black Mirror, Episode 1, Nosedive here.

Available on Netflix now.