When a new filming technique fuses an actor’s neural impulses with AI computer graphics, it allows Hollywood A-lister Brandy Friday to be recast as the romantic male lead in a vintage British classic, however the tech is unreliable and the actress finds herself trapped in a monochrome virtual reality.

There is an interesting comparison to be made between Hotel Reverie – the third in this season of Black Mirror – and the previous episode Bête Noir. In both cases, the ‘science’ bit of the fiction is pretty hokey. In Bête Noir, the improbability honks awkwardly, perhaps because it’s hard to care about the characters. Or, perhaps, it’s the silliness of the fictional science that undermines the attempts at an emotional throughline.

In Hotel Reverie, the tech premise is equally nonsensical, but we go with it because the story is so beautifully told. Brandy – a black American A-lister, sensitively rendered by Issa Rae – is fed up with either playing victims in Sundance movies or sidekicks in Ryan Gosling blockbusters, so she jumps at the chance to play the lead in a reboot of one of her favourite Golden Age British classics. She naturally assumes it’s going to be a whole new script, but finds herself acting inside an AI simulation, hooked up to her own brain.

This could so easily buckle under the weight of its own high concept but Brooker’s script is something of a masterclass in balancing form and content. There’s a lot going on. On the one hand it’s a familiar satire on the shallowness of a movie industry prepared to artlessly cannibalise its own greatness at any cost. On the other, it’s a meta comedy about the blurred lines between fiction and reality, channeling influences all the way from Schwarzenegger’s The Last Action Hero to Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. Over here, it’s a delicately heartfelt and political gay love story. Over there, it’s a genuinely exciting tech thriller.

What really makes this episode sing however, is Haolo Wang’s flawless direction. Many directors have tried (and failed) to reproduce the shimmering monochrome of 1940s classic movie making. They usually overdo it. The cinematography looks too clean, the lighting isn’t quite right, the actors are basically taking the piss with their overly clipped accents. But everything in the world of Hotel Reverie – a hybrid of Casablanca, Brief Encounter and Now Voyager – is pitch perfect, even down to the slight wobble in the travelling dolly shots.

Kudos, too, has to go to Emma Corrin for their extraordinary depiction of Clara as played by the tragic 1940s starlet Dorothy Chambers. Corrin is channeling Celia Johnson to perfection, with a soupçon of Ingrid Bergman for good measure. It’s a delicate, minutely observed perfect performance that never allows us to question the implausibilites of the premise for a single second.

Verdict: Along with season opener Common People Brooker is excelling this time around by telling far richer, more human stories. Whether or not this is what people expect from Black Mirror, I don’t know, but I unequivocally loved every second of Hotel Reverie. 10/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com