Smithereens (Black Mirror)

"Smithereens" was written by Brooker, who wanted the series to contain an episode without any futuristic technology, to remind viewers that Black Mirror is not solely a science fiction show. Previous such instalments include the first episode, "The National Anthem", and season three's "Shut Up and Dance".[5] The two initial sparks for "Smithereens" were a question about how a person deals with the loss of a loved one whose life has been recorded in social media and an experience in a rideshare car booked through Uber. In the latter, the driver unexpectedly got out of the car and looked for something in the boot, while Brooker realised he was unaware of where they were. The driver was just getting some water.[6]

The grieving Hayley aims to access her daughter's social media account on the fictional website Persona.

The former idea developed into a story where the protagonist was trying to get into the social media account of somebody who died by suicide, but Brooker thought it would be "extremely superficial and cheap, and also weirdly slightly intrusive" to give a "glib reason" for a character's suicide. In the final episode, the secondary character Hayley has this storyline, but the contents of her daughter's Persona account are not shown. Brooker said, "Really, she's probably just going to open another box of questions by going in there".[7]

Executive producer Annabel Jones described Chris as "overwhelmed" and said that he "feels like an onlooker" over society. Discussing the psychological effects of technology, Brooker said that he used to "reach for a cigarette first thing in the morning" as a chain smoker, and now does the same thing with his smartphone for a "similar reward-feedback loop".[8] Jones gave the example of a homescreen showing the number of unread emails as gamification, one of many features that witness how phones are "subtly and incrementally ... designed to absorb you".[6]

Billy Bauer was written to embody a Silicon Valley entrepreneur: Brooker said that Billy thinks himself a "switched on, liberal, hippy kind of guy".[8][9] He was not written to be a "cartoon villain" or resemble any particular social media CEOs, though Brooker did take inspiration from a ten-day retreat taken by then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Jones commented that Billy is "as lost as" Chris and feels "out of control".[5]

Brooker described the episode's ending, in which strangers are seen looking at their phones, as a message about how the characters' lives were "reduced to ephemeral confetti that just passes us by".[5] The "most important day" of Chris's life and maybe Jaden's is "reduced to the level of a pop-up".[9]

Topher Grace, a prior fan of the programme, played Billy Bauer.

Having previously talked to Brooker about appearing, Scott joined the cast of "Smithereens" as he was "really gripped by [the main] character."[10] He described himself as less interested in technology than "the idea of the vulnerability of people that a simple mistake can be made at any given moment and you can blame it on yourself or you can blame it the powers that be".[8] Per Scott's request, most of the episode was shot in chronological order, so that he could "slowly reveal" more of Chris's character. He said he was "as playful as possible" when acting, aiming to perform "in as many different ways as possible".[10] One difficulty in filming was that Scott did not know how to drive a car. Production mounted a car on top of a mobile platform and instructed Scott to mimic steering to go along with filming.[11]

Topher Grace—who had recently filmed for BlacKkKlansman (2018)—played Billy Bauer. He had been looking to vary the types of characters he played and was a fan of the show, having particularly enjoyed season two's "Be Right Back" and other episodes which "are more emotional than technology-based".[12] He was surprised while reading the script when he reached Billy's appearance, having built up an expectation that he would be more villainous.[12][13] He said that similar tech company founders had "created their own legend" and that he expected Billy to stand out in a crowd and have a distinctive "relationship with spirituality". For this reason, Grace wanted Billy to be bald but after discussion he ended up with a bun. Grace told an interviewer that he was unsure of whether Billy was "as trapped as he says", but that he does not personally like "people like this".[13] Damson Idris played the Smithereen intern Jaden. His first Black Mirror audition was for the series three episode "Men Against Fire".[14]

Director James Hawes had previously directed "Hated in the Nation" in the third series.[15] Most of the filming took place in England, overlapping with production of Bandersnatch.[2][10] Urban scenes were filmed in various downtown London locations.[10] Some footage was shot in Harrietsham, Maidstone in Kent and in a field near Gravesend around June 2018. The Fairbourne Reservoir in Kent was used as a location for boardroom scenes.[16] Grace flew to the UK to watch Scott's acting and briefly meet him before the filming of his scenes in Spain.[17] To help Grace match the emotional intensity of Scott during the phone call, an actor was hired to read Chris's lines offscreen—usually the person in such a role is not a professional actor.[12]

The episode's music was composed by the Japanese artist Ryuichi Sakamoto, known for his electronic music and soundtracks. It incorporates synthesisers which, according to Pitchfork reviewer Daniel Martin-McCormick, create "rising tension", "a looming state of emergency" and are "steadfastly integrated" with the episode.[18] The soundtrack was released as an album two days after the episode's premiere.[19]

The episode received mixed reception, with most critics finding the storyline and subject matter lacking in complexity, but Scott's performance accomplished. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the episode holds an approval rating of 65% based on 26 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "A slippery moral dilemma and a superb turn from Andrew Scott make 'Smithereens' watchable, even if its familiar story feels more like an early episode of Black Mirror than a fresh futuristic horror story."[36] Out of five stars, the episode garnered four stars in The Telegraph, three in the BBC and The Independent and two in Vulture.[20][28][31][32] It received a rating of 7.8 out of 10 in the magazine Paste.[30] Complex's Frazier Tharpe thought the episode was the best of series five, but The Guardian's Lucy Mangan found it "perhaps least successful".[26][37] Sims said it was the "only definite flop" of the series as it "suffers from many of the flaws" of the fourth one.[23]

Critics identified self-parody, drama and cliché as aspects of the episode, and mostly reviewed its tone negatively. Mellor said that it "feels like an imitation" of the "uniquely identifiable personality" of Black Mirror.[24] Romano and Richards criticised the episode as reliant on clichés.[22][34] Cumming summarised it as "muted rather than subtle" and Hugh Montgomery reviewed it for the BBC as "a rather inert and under-characterised drama".[28][32] Longridge suggested that the episode may be "winking at the audience", given that it relates to a well-known parody of the show's message: "what if phones, but too much".[33] Similarly, Mellor and Tharpe highlighted potential self-parody in Chris's rant upon discovering Jaden is an intern, though Tharpe found this nevertheless "emotionally affecting".[24][37] Tharpe also praised the episode as tense and "well-paced" yet "casually hilarious".[37]

The storyline and central theme were mostly criticised. As the longest episode of the series, "Smithereens" was criticised for length by Cumming and Sims, who both described the plot as "thin", as did Turk.[21][23][32] Mellor said that it "lacks this show's usual depth", Turk found "the scope a bit narrow" and Richards viewed it as having "little to say that isn't already common opinion".[21][24][34] Sims wrote that it was "hampered by ... how long it takes for the action to get going".[23] The exploration of social media was reviewed by Turk to be "a bit two-dimensional" and Longo saw the episode as "too self-contained to fully realize the potential of the ideas".[21][27] Montgomery wrote that the characters are "being held ransom to a plotline which is a vehicle for some rather clunky point-making" and Romano saw the message as "both redundant and a little weak".[22][28] Bramesco critiqued the episode as having a "strong concept with lots of avenues for deeper exploration" which was averted in favour of "the same old conclusion about smartphones exacerbating our worst qualities", while both Longo and Turk saw concerns about data privacy to be unsatisfactorily explored.[20][21][27]

Some critics were disappointed by a lack of twists in the episode, while Chris's recounting of the car crash and the ending received mixed reception. Mangan and Reynolds both said that the episode did not "twist and turn" as much as it should have and Sims "kept waiting for a twist that never really arrived".[21][23][26] Reynolds found the storyline predictable from the 15 minute mark onwards, though Dwilson was "never quite sure where the episode was heading" and mostly guessed incorrectly.[21][25] Longo saw Chris's "big reveal" about the cause of the car crash to be "devastating", but Romano said it "simply doesn't land with much impact".[22][27] Mellor saw the ending as a "more subtle and effective point about social media", but Richards said it "falls flat" and Bramesco called it a "contrived non-ending".[20][24][34]

Andrew Scott's acting received praise even among some negative reviews.

Andrew Scott's role as Chris received critical acclaim. Several critics found that his performance was the highlight of an otherwise poor episode, such as Sims, who said that Scott's "committed lead performance" made him "at least interested throughout", and Reynolds, who said that Scott "just about held [the episode] all together".[21][23] Benji Wilson of The Telegraph found that his "astonishing control and range ... elevated a too-tidy plot".[31] Montgomery called the character "a compellingly twitchy, ambiguous presence", while Mangan said Scott had "uniquely potent and peculiar energy" which is "perfectly channelled" into Chris.[26] Longo said that the acting is "unnerving throughout", but that Scott "dials it up to a 10" in the phone call with Billy.[27] Bramesco viewed it differently, saying that Scott "feels like he's starting at a ten and leaving himself nowhere to go" and finding Scott unconvincing in the phone call, "seemingly uncertain whether the moment should be played hysterically or for genuine pathos".[20] While Cumming found Chris to be "the only developed character", Longo said that the episode "missed key chances to add depth" to Chris.[27][32]

Other actors and characters received more mixed reception. Montgomery found Grace "an amusing Jack Dorsey parody", and Dwilson "appreciated how his character surprised [her]" in his relatability.[25][28] Vorel, in contrast, found it "rather difficult" to empathise with Billy.[30] Idris received praise for his role from Dwilson and Romano.[22][25] The storyline involving Hayley was criticised as "undercooked" by Cumming and "extraneous frippery" by Bramesco, but Vorel found the nature of her attempting to log into her daughter's Persona account every day a "powerful, Sisyphean piece of imagery".[20][30][32]

Hawes received praise from Romano as he "keeps the pace taut", while Longo analysed that he "deliberately shot Chris' reactions to the use of phones in a cafe to cast a shadow of isolation around him" and used "flashback", "foreshadowing" and "purposeful misdirection".[22][27] Pitchfork rated the soundtrack 6.8 out of 10, for being effective but lacking "iconic melodies". The reviewer, Martin-McCormick, found that the track "Meditation App" would fit in "the lobby of a high-end spa", but did not recommend the other tracks as standalone music.[18]

"Smithereens" ranked poorly on critics' lists of the 23 instalments of Black Mirror, from best to worst:

IndieWire authors ranked the 22 Black Mirror instalments excluding Bandersnatch by quality, giving "Smithereens" a position of 11th.[46] Instead of by quality, Proma Khosla of Mashable ranked the episodes by tone, concluding that "Smithereens" was the 10th-most pessimistic episode of the show.[47]

As the fifth series of Black Mirror consisted of three episodes that do not tell a complete story, it was not initially clear whether it would compete in TV Movie or Limited Series or Drama Series categories of the Emmy Awards. After Netflix petitioned to allow "Smithereens" as a TV Movie, despite a new rule that entries must be 75 minutes or longer, it was initially reported that it would be nominated in this category. Later, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced that the episode would instead be competing as a Drama Series, where performers who appear in less than 50% of a series have the choice to compete in leading, supporting, or guest awards.[48][49] Scott was nominated for the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series category. The winner was Ron Cephas Jones for This Is Us.[50]