Written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by James Hawes, it premiered on Netflix on 5 June 2019, alongside "Striking Vipers" and "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too".

Critical reception was mixed: Scott's acting received widespread praise and a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award, but reviewers mostly criticised the episode's storyline and the simplicity of its message.

He has sex with Hayley (Amanda Drew), a woman from his group therapy, who has been trying to guess the password to her late daughter's Persona account to find out what led to her suicide.

Formerly a teacher, Chris lost his fiancée Tamsin in a car accident with a drunk driver three years earlier and has been planning a kidnapping for weeks.

[4] "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.

[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.

[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".

[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".

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][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".

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.

[20][21] Atypical for the genre, the gathering of intelligence is speedy, due to the power of the social media companies, rather than forming the majority of the episode's runtime.

[22][23] Vox reviewer Aja Romano found that it "blends a hefty mix of bleak nihilism and social satire" and "comes across like a thesis statement for the series as a whole".

[22] Louisa Mellor of Den of Geek saw a "black comedy of errors" in Chris's plan quickly going wrong in several ways, and Sims commented that the episode showcases "classic hostage tropes" including "the panicked cops, the slick negotiator [and] the snipers looking for a shot through their scopes".

[23][24] Stephanie Dube Dwilson, writing for Heavy, noted an absence of an "unexpected" or "incredibly dark" twist, as many prior episodes employ.

[25] Guadagno saw Smithereen's information gathering on Chris as "both a violation of privacy" and a demonstration of "what you can learn about someone based on surveilling their digital activities".

[29] Victoria Turk of Wired saw it unrealistic that Smithereen choose to get involved with police activity, saying that such companies "seem to constantly distance themselves" from this "as they don't want that responsibility".

[22][30][31] Ed Cumming of The Independent commented of the name choice: "A smithereen is a tiny fragment of something, the debris of an explosion: the firm's users and also the information they post".

[29] Easter egg references to previous episodes are made through frames of a character scrolling through contacts in their phone, many of whom share names with previous Black Mirror characters, and trending topics on Smithereen include SaitoGemu, a video game company from "Playtest", and Tucker, the company behind simulated reality in "San Junipero".

[35] The episode received mixed reception, with most critics finding the storyline and subject matter lacking in complexity, but Scott's performance accomplished.

[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".

[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".

[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.

[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.

[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".

[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.

[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".

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.