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Common People is the first episode of Black Mirror Series 7, and the order of the episodes presented is the recommended order, I understand.
It first highlights the important fact that Chris O’Dowd (The Starling) still doesn’t understand how to have a shave…
Anyway, it’s his (as Mike) and Amanda’s (Rashida Jones – On The Rocks) wedding anniversary, and time for a weekend away at their regular haunt that serves the Juniper Brat Burger*, but life ain’t all sunshine and rainbows, as while everyone should be knuckling down at work, one of Mike’s colleagues is spending too long on his break, on Dum Dummies, a website that’s like OnlyFans, but for doing stupid things online for extra cash.
However, Amanda collapses at work, Mike’s called to the hospital, to find his wife on a breathing tube, but help may be at hand from a company called Rivermind, which can take an imprint of her neurological structure, effectively backing up a part of her brain to their computer, they’ll remove the tumour and then put in some fake brain stuff, and reprogram it with the backup.
Job done, it seems like, but it sounds expensive. Even once you pay, that appears not to be the end of things, as Amanda starts exhibiting strange behaviour when certain issues crop up that instantly reminded me of the basic tier for a certain other streaming subscription service, but I’ll avoid spoilers for obvious reasons.
In Common People, you can see way certain elements are going- given how the plot progresses – although not all of them, as well as the desperate lengths people will go to in order to raise extra cash – like the man in an early Dum Dummies video, who drinks his own… well…
That said, these days, if people are going to do something stupid, they wouldn’t necessarily require a specialist website, they’d just film it and put it on Tiktok without thinking of the financial side.
(*Hence, a reference to Season 3’s San Junipero, and I’ve come across another one later on in the series, but no spoilers, obvs)
Common People is now available on Netflix.
Score: 6.5/10
Widescreen ratio: 2.39:1
Director: Ally Pankiw
Producer: Richard Webb
Writer: Charlie Brooker
Music: Ames Bessada
Cast:
Amanda: Rashida Jones
Mike: Chris O’Dowd
Gaynor: Tracee Ellis Ross
Shane: Nicholas Cirillo
Kyle: Donald Sales
Eva: Lucy Turnbull
Tisha: Milana Wan
Mickey: Sofia Hodsoni
Angie: Sabrina Jalees
Penelope: Carolyn Taylor
Oscar: Huxley Fisher
Bobby: JP McInnis
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.