Since its debut back in 2011, Charlie Brooker's dark anthology series Black Mirror has delivered some superb science fiction stories, mixed with unguessable twists, jaw-dropping moments and even emotional beats that have you reaching for the tissues.
The new seventh season has now arrived on Netflix, and offers something else fans have been waiting for – the show's first pure sequel, a follow-up to the deliciously bonkers season four episode USS Callister.
However, while a couple of the six new episodes are as good as the best of Black Mirror and feature all the elements we have come to expect (including some terrific casting choices), it's actually USS Callister: Into Infinity that is the biggest disappointment.
The best episode of the new season is the first one, which works as both an emotional drama and a sly dig at costly subscriptions. Titled Common People, it stars Rashida Jones and Chris O'Dowd as married couple Amanda and Mike, whose lives are upended when Amanda suffers a medical emergency. Determined to save her life, Mike signs her up for "Rivermind", a high tech system that will keep her alive.
Unfortunately it is a subscription service, and as the costs mount, Mike is forced down a desperate path to pay for it.
It's as bleak as we've come to expect from Black Mirror, anchored by moving performances by Jones and O'Dowd as a believable husband and wife whose decisions in the episode make the viewer question what they themselves would do in the same awful situation.
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Like the best of the series, it is about humanity, love, and how technology can be both a gift and a curse, and one scene in particular, featuring O'Dowd and a crib, is also one of the show's most heartbreaking screen moments.
Related: Black Mirror boss says season 7 has "bleakest" episode yet
So what about the rest of the series? The next episode (if you are watching in order) Bête Noire, and episode five (Eulogy), are both clever and well-written, but neither have that extra spark that would make them classic episodes in the future.
In the first, Siena Kelly plays Maria, who is unnerved when her former geeky schoolmate Verity (Rosy McEwen) joins the company she works at. She starts to notice odd things about Verity that everyone else misses. It's all quite obvious as the plot unfolds, as is the conclusion of Eulogy, which has Paul Giamatti reliving old memories when he is given the tech to be able to literally step inside old photographs.
Giamatti's gruff performance is, as you'd expect, a joy to watch, but both episodes feel longer than they should be and are ultimately pretty forgettable.
Episode three, Hotel Reverie, is far more enjoyable, and not just because the always wonderful Awkwafina and Harriet Walter are in it.
Issa Rae plays an actress who is hired to make an immersive remake of a vintage British black and white movie. She ends up trapped inside the film itself, along with actors who believe they are the characters they play – including a tragic movie star who is playing the role of the glamorous lead, Dorothy (Emma Corrin).
It's one of the sweeter episodes of Black Mirror, but those wanting something darker get their wish with episode four, Plaything. It features the brief return of game developer Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), who originally appeared in the interactive Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
We're not going to reveal much else, except to say it also involves Peter Capaldi playing an eccentric murder suspect, Shetland's Lewis Gribben nailing it as a nineties version of the same character, and an addictive Lemmings-style video game that manages to be both cute and creepy enough to make you want to disconnect your games console before you go to bed.
So we've touched on the great, middling and pretty good episodes of Black Mirror season seven, which just leaves us with the most disappointing: the highly-anticipated sequel, USS Callister: Into Infinity.
Fans of the original Emmy award-winning USS Callister will remember that a group of people who worked for a gifted programmer had their DNA stolen by their boss, who then trapped their digital clones inside his Star Trek-style space adventure game. They managed to escape from his control by the end of the episode, and the sequel picks up their story.
Led by Captain Nanette Cole (The Penguin's Cristin Milioti), the crew of the USS Callister are now stranded in an infinite virtual universe where they have to fight to survive against millions of real world players. They've definitely not got the happy ending we thought they would get at the end of the original episode – but then this is Black Mirror, so happy endings are pretty rare all round – but they don't even get a particularly satisfying one this time around either.
Instead, the feature-length episode feels like a retread of the first one, and while it is great to see Miloti, Jimmi Simpson, Billy Magnussen, Milanka Brooks and Osy Ikhile back on the bridge (Michaela Coel sadly doesn't return), there is a feeling throughout that the Black Mirror team returned to the Callister universe because fans wanted them to, and not because they had an idea they were desperate to bring to the screen.
It does have a few fun moments (including a very spoilery one which we won't, well, spoil), but while the smart Black Mirror twist should have been that the sequel was better than the original, instead we are just trapped in space like the USS Callister crew, with nowhere interesting to go.
Black Mirror is available on Netflix.
Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy
Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times, OK!, The Guardian and Grazia, is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies.
She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids. In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic, and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
