A high-flying development executive takes against the new employee in a solidly silly thriller. Here’s our Black Mirror: Bête Noire review.
Maria (Siena Kelly) is good at her job, and not very nice. Office wunderkind at a trendy-looking chocolate company, her idea to combine Miso jam with a dark chocolate coating is taking focus groups by storm. The first bite tastes as bizarre as it sounds – on second inspection, apparently, it starts to grow on you. We’ll take their word for it…
Still, despite her culinary triumphs, Maria has something of a mean streak. Simultaneously insecure and ambitious, she can’t help but bristle when an old classmate – Rosy McEwen’s Verity – arrives on the scene and effectively talks her way into a job in her department. Always the weird kid at school, prone to spending lunch breaks alone in the computer suite and with few social skills to speak of, Verity seems surprisingly well-adjusted. She’s chatty, popular, and comes with a string of qualifications and recommendations. Maria despises her – if only she could figure out why…
If we were to split current Mirror episodes into the more traditional Black (tech-based paranoia) and Red (horror/thriller-inspired) categories, Bête Noire would certainly be in the latter. Content to rub its hands together rather than wring them, the episode is a perfectly solid, if disposable, three-star thriller which descends into some high-sci-fi nonsense in its final act. After the furious return-to-form of Common People, it provides either a much-needed spot of levity or a healthy dose of whiplash, depending on which side of bed you woke up on this morning.
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For its part, the script contains some fun set pieces and a smattering of satisfying callbacks; the direction is solid and unshowy; the performances are believable without being remarkable. Everything here is fine, it just doesn’t feel entirely Black Mirror. It’s in this sort of episode that the series feels less like a tonally consistent anthology show and more a collection of loosely themed original stories – a modern Twilight Zone with a very confused marketing department.
As a reasonably fun, 50-minute thriller, Bête Noire stands up well. But unlike its titular Miso-chocolate combo, it’s just a little bit bland.
Black Mirror is streaming on Netflix now. Check out reviews of the rest of series 7 here.
