[11][12] Adrian Martin of Screen wrote that many episodes depict "basic human emotions and desires" that "intersect with, and get twisted by, a technological system that invariably spins out of control and into catastrophe".

[22][23] Some episodes employ features of lighter-hearted genres, such as romance in "San Junipero" and "Striking Vipers", romantic comedy in "Hang the DJ", or space opera in "USS Callister".

[24][25][26][27] Other genres include drama ("Fifteen Million Merits"), psychological thriller (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch), post-apocalyptic fiction ("Metalhead"), and war film ("Men Against Fire").

[11] Juliana Lopes of Via Panorâmica argued that the dystopian settings resemble the French Marxist Guy Debord's concept of the spectacle, wherein mass media create alienation and an unattainable utopia for individuals to pursue.

For instance, in "Nosedive", the protagonist Lacie strives for a utopian life through superficiality and performativity, in a society where social media success contributes to high socioeconomic status.

[40] The song "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)" (1964) by Irma Thomas appears in six episodes: "Fifteen Million Merits", "White Christmas", "Men Against Fire", "Crocodile", "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too", and "Joan Is Awful".

[46][47] Hannah John-Kamen played the singer Selma ("Fifteen Million Merits") and the journalist Sonja ("Playtest"); Michaela Coel was an airline check-in worker ("Nosedive") and the space crew member Shania ("USS Callister"); Monica Dolan acted as a police officer ("Smithereens") and a protagonist's mother ("Loch Henry"); Daniel Lapaine played the minor character Max ("The Entire History of You") and the doctor Daniel ("Black Museum").

[48][49][50][51] Some writers believe that Black Mirror episodes are set in a shared universe, due to the abundance of Easter eggs, or tonal and thematic connections across the programme as a whole.

[53] After the sixth series, Brooker commented that the viewer could consider each episode to be a Streamberry show—the Netflix parody featured in "Joan Is Awful" whose titles reference previous instalments.

[58] Brooker recognised that Rod Serling had based The Twilight Zone on contemporary issues, often controversial ones such as racism, but placed them in fictional settings to get around television censors at the time.

Brooker commented that the second series mirrors the first: the former has topics of (in order) "warped political satire", "dystopian hellscape", and "relationship torn apart by technology", while the latter presents episodes of these forms in reverse.

"Be Right Back" follows Martha (Hayley Atwell) turning to artificial intelligence for emotional support while grieving over the death of her partner Ash (Domhnall Gleeson).

[45]: 101–105 On the day of the press screening for "White Christmas", Brooker and Jones had a meeting with Channel 4 executives, who told them that they wanted to continue the series but due to budget constraints, it would need to be a co-production.

[80] "Nosedive" is an episode starring Bryce Dallas Howard as Lacie, a woman pursuing social media popularity in a world where individuals assign ratings to every interaction with each other.

"Shut Up and Dance" is about a teenager blackmailed anonymously over the internet, starring Alex Lawther as Kenny and Jerome Flynn as Hector, and written by Brooker and William Bridges.

"Hated in the Nation" is a police procedural, with Kelly Macdonald as Karin Parke and Faye Marsay as Blue Coulson exploring the role of robot bees in a series of deaths.

[81] He began writing in July 2016 and continued throughout the 2016 United States presidential election; he told Digital Spy that he did not know what demand there would be for "nothing but bleak nihilism" and thus included "more hope" than in previous series.

[88][89] "USS Callister" is a space epic based around a video game company, starring Jesse Plemons as CTO Robert Daly and Cristin Milioti as the new programmer Nanette Cole.

"Arkangel" is an episode about a mother implanting an invasive technology in her daughter, starring Rosemarie DeWitt as Marie and Brenna Harding as Sara, and directed by Jodie Foster.

[92][93][94][95] Set in 1984, the film follows Stefan, portrayed by Fionn Whitehead, a young programmer who begins to question reality and experience deteriorating mental health as he adapts a sprawling fantasy novel into a video game.

[96][97] Bandersnatch is an interactive film, regularly prompting the viewer to select one of two choices on screen that affect how the storyline continues; there are over one trillion potential paths to view the work and five distinct endings.

[153] In The Guardian, Lucy Mangan rated the fifth series four stars, finding that the episodes are disparate in content but share "a new air of calm authority" that could reflect "an increasing confidence" of the producers.

[166] LaToya Ferguson wrote in Paste that later series saw a "creative downfall" and increasing Americanisation, with their lengthier episodes, higher-profile actors and more "polished" style not compensating for a decline in quality.

[176][177] At the end of 2019 and 2020, a number of publications also created lists of the best television shows of the 21st century to date: readers of Digital Spy voted that Black Mirror was 13th-best, The Guardian included it in 23rd place and Deadline Hollywood reported that it was one of the 21 "most influential" programmes.

[214][215] The romantic comedy Made for Love (2021) stars Cristin Milioti of series four episode "USS Callister" and its technological premise of a woman whose ex-husband implanted a monitoring device in her body was compared to Black Mirror.

Four years later, the Daily Mail published allegations that the then-prime minister David Cameron had placed a "private part of his anatomy" into the mouth of a dead pig as an initiation rite at university.

[239] A number of mock "Tucker's Newsagent and Games" storefronts, designed after the fictional Bandersnatch shop of the same name, were erected in Birmingham and London shortly after the film's release in 2018.

69.90 explores "loneliness and gaming", according to the creators Huyen Pham and Marcin Nguyen; they discussed 20 different ideas before deciding on a computer simulation which is indistinguishable from real life.

The Sum of Happiness was posted on Martin Stankiewicz's YouTube channel and focuses on a neurological implant and a relationship app, previously explored Black Mirror topics.

[247] A second series of webisodes, initially announced as Little Black Mirror but eventually renamed Stories From Our Future, was directed for Netflix América Latina by American YouTuber Rudy Mancuso.