BLACK MIRROR, 7.1 – ‘Common People’

Black Mirror currently sits at a very interesting existential crossroads: what value does a show like this hold in the wake of our modern techno-capitalist dystopia? The Netflix-produced techno-horror anthology show has undergone significant change in the fourteen years total it has been running. In 2011, it emerged on our screens as an omen of what happens when technology gets pushed to its limit; in 2025, it’s taken more the form of an ominous reflection of how things have become now. Billionaires like Elon Musk sit at the head of our alt-right governmental institutions. Generative A.I. technologies have irreversibly devoured the ways we consume information and are threatening to cannibalise artistic industries left and right. The show’s science fiction scenarios have always attempted to ground themselves in a more immediate future, not that far off from the technologies we are presented with today. But the horrific prescience of that has only become more potent and bleak—exactly because the speed at which our technology has advanced is only growing faster by the minute.

So, will the terrible day arrive when Black Mirror simply enters the realm of realism and departs wholesale from speculation? Faced with such a question, creator Charlie Brooker’s efforts to pivot the show in a new creative direction showed its face in a fascinating way with the sixth season of the show—where the social critiques that Black Mirror posited were directed more towards general trends such as A.I. in the media industry, the ethical question of true crime obsessions, virtual work, and so on. But with the first episode of Season 7, “Common People,” Brooker brings Black Mirror back to its bleaker roots, creating a scenario where the introduction of life-saving brain implant technology for a schoolteacher in crisis comes at an impossibly dire cost.

“Common People” opens on the idyllic sight of that schoolteacher, Amanda (Rashida Jones), in bed with her husband, Mike (Chris O’Dowd), a welder who works for a manufacturing company. They have been trying for a child for quite some time, and both of them are well-respected in their own professions—and their comfortable reality as a couple almost immediately shatters when Amanda goes into shock during class one day, revealing the existence of a brain tumour in her head that is proven inoperable. The only existing solution to her tumour is Rivermind, introduced to the couple by Gaynor (Tracee Ellis Ross), an employee for the company that creates the synthetic tissue that will help Amanda recover. After a quick procedure, Amanda seems to recover swiftly—the only downside that seems to exist is a growing length of sleep for her, a coverage area that shuts down the service if she leaves the general region they live in, as well as a costly monthly subscription.

Gradually, however, something deeply unsettling comes out of Amanda—spontaneous advertised messages that she unconsciously utters while briefly blacked out, which she cannot get rid of unless she upgrades to a subscription plan that costs over double what the couple are currently paying for. In the process, Amanda’s interactions with her students become more and more unsettling, recommending Christian family counselling to a student, and making an inappropriate suggestion to her superior. What eventually emerges from here is a profoundly primal horror inherent to the way this premise is executed. We have seen the rise of subscription models all across the digital marketplace that are contingent on higher payments in exchange for the immediate reduction of advertisements—but we essentially only see them in the context of streaming services. Take, for instance, YouTube, where the advertisements present in videos have only grown more aggressive and unskippable, and where the only respite from them is an upgrade to Premium.

With that in mind, transplanting the predatory advertising practices of subscription models—alongside the sneaky updates and regressions they introduce for basic customers—to something as primal as bodily autonomy is one of the most horrific stretches of imagination that this show has committed to since the blocking implants of “White Christmas.” Gaynor’s language only grows more disingenuously concerning as she jacks up the advertisements and introduces more Rivermind subscription tiers.

Meanwhile, Mike resorts to a live-streaming service called Dum Dummies, in which he is forced to perform acts of humiliation for online pay as a means of paying for more Rivermind benefits, something that physically takes a toll on him, and eventually draws unwanted eyes toward his actions. O’Dowd and Jones—well-respected performers in their own right, and testaments to the kind of profile that Black Mirror has achieved and long since occupied—play off their characters’ romance with great amounts of chemistry, which only adds to the horror they reach as their desperation grows and manifests in different ways.

That said, there is a degree to which this kind of routinely depressing Black Mirror episode has dulled in impact over time as they have grown more and more abundant over the course of the past six seasons, and “Common People” stumbles as it nears the finish line. Tonally, the episode starts to lose its way—introducing incredibly blunt satirical comedy when it comes to how Rivermind advertises its higher subscription tiers, before proceeding to crush the audience under the weight of how utterly bleak Amanda and Mike’s situation becomes. Depth-wise, the episode’s presentation of this hypothetical technology is interested in showing it largely on its face—Black Mirror has historically been at its strongest when it explores the fuller implications of tech that meddles with consciousness, asking questions of ambiguity that the audience realises they would rather not have answered. In “Common People,” Rivermind’s commercialised intrusion of Amanda’s mind is largely presented as a resounding negative, but there are intriguing questions inherent to the ways that Amanda’s brain seems to be owned by this company that are never fully explored.

One is also made to wonder if the humiliation rites of Dum Dummies have really anything meaningful to do with the advertising conceit of the episode, as it seems poised for an episode of its own rather than being slotted in as a side hustle to make this couple’s ends meet. But if any episode from this new season seems designed to pull off a strong first impression, it is likely this one. “Common People,” with all its bleakness and furiously targeted satire, makes it clear that Brooker’s penchant for utterly brutalising narrative craft has still retained some kind of an edge. Even amid the wandering tonal focus and somewhat unrelated detours of this episode, the anger this episode harbours towards the profit-generating deterioration of our subscription-based marketplace is direct and significant. If nothing else, this opening episode demonstrates that Black Mirror understands decently well the kind of typical episode that keeps its lineup consistently entertaining. But the question for what remains of this season seems to now be if the show will still be able to innovate and shock us with fresh, terrifying, and enlightening insights about our modern world, growing and evolving from the ways it used to over the past decade and a half.

UK | 2025 | 56 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writer: Charlie Brooker (story by Charlie Brooker & Bisha K. Ali).
director: Ally Pankiw.
starring: Chris O’Dowd, Rashida Jones, Tracee Ellis Ross, Nicholas Cirillo & Donald Sales.