A couple believe that they have got away with manslaughter but then an investigator starts snooping with her memory-reading machine.

It’s fair to say that whenever a story begins with the cover-up of a bad thing that it will come back and bite them, such is the nature of movie karma, and Charlie Brooker’s story sticks firmly to this tradition. Andrea Riseborough is great as the accidental killer, who through a moment of madness covers her tracks rather than doing the right thing.

The tech in this instalment of the anthology series is a machine that taps into your memory, recalling a certain incident or event and recording it as visual testimony. It’s a combination of the Blade Runner Voight Kampff and Esper machines that Deckard uses in that movie, coupled with the recall/pre-cog devices used in Total Recall and Minority Report – this episode swims in the same waters as Phillip K Dick’s Electric Dreams. It’s a bleak, dark environment, with good use made of the Reykjavik locations.

Director John Hillcoat also made the grim The Road, so he’s no stranger to nihilism, and the utter lack of humanity exhibited shown by the lead character is juxtaposed with her desire to not miss her child’s school play. And so the whole thing unravels and we observe this car crash in slow motion.

Verdict: A cautionary tale about the inability to escape surveillance and how one bad deed will inevitably lead to a further descent. Chilling in every sense, it’s a dystopia that’s not that far removed from today. Gulp. 8/10

Nick Joy