Be Right Back

"Be Right Back" is the first episode of the second series of Black Mirror, starring Hayley Atwell and Domhnall Gleeson. It was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and first aired on Channel 4 on 11 February 2013.

Plot

Martha (Hayley Atwell) and Ash (Domhnall Gleeson) are a young couple who move to a remote house in the countryside. Ash is shown to be active on social media, while Martha is markedly not. The day after moving into the house, Ash is killed returning the hire van. At the funeral, Martha's friend Sara (Sinead Matthews) tells her about a new online service that lets people stay in touch with the deceased. By using all of his past online communications and social media profiles, a new "Ash" can be created virtually. Martha rejects the idea outright, but Sara signs Martha up to the service anyway, without telling her. When Martha is sent an e-mail supposedly from Ash, she furiously confronts Sara, who urges her to at least give the service a try before dismissing it.

Over the following days, Martha is overwhelmed by grief, and soon discovers that she is pregnant. Becoming emotionally unstable, she responds to the artificial Ash's e-mail. She starts to communicate with him through instant messaging, and informs him of the pregnancy. She then uploads videos and photos of Ash to the service's database, and the service duplicates Ash's voice to talk to Martha over the phone. Martha allows herself to believe that she is talking to her dead partner, and over the following weeks she talks to the artificial Ash almost non-stop, keeping him updated regarding the pregnancy. After Martha accidentally damages her phone and has a panic attack when she temporarily loses contact with the service, the artificial Ash tells her about the service's next stage, which is still in its experimental phase: a body made of synthetic flesh that the program can be uploaded onto.

Martha buys a blank, synthetic body from the service, and following the artificial Ash's instructions she allows the body to take on Ash's physical characteristics. The end result is an android that looks almost exactly like Ash, only missing minor characteristics such as his facial hair and a mole on his neck. From the moment the android is activated, Martha is uncomfortable and struggles to accept its existence. Despite the android satisfying her sexually, she quickly becomes frustrated by it constantly doing what she says without question, its lack of emotion (only expressing emotions when she tells it to do so), and the absence of certain habits and personality traits which the real Ash had but the service did not have information on. After an argument, Martha decides she can no longer tolerate the Ash android, taking it to the edge of a tall cliff and ordering it to jump off. The android agrees to do so, but Martha grows even angrier, saying that the real Ash would not have willingly jumped. The android responds by begging for its own life, causing Martha to realize that she can't bring herself to get rid of it.

The scene cuts to several years later, and Martha is shown to have raised her daughter (Indira Ainger) in the country house, keeping the Ash android locked in the attic. She allows her daughter to see the android on weekends, but Martha's daughter convinces her to allow her into the attic on her birthday to give the android a piece of birthday cake. Martha's daughter reveals in her conversation with the android that she knows it does not need to eat, and merely used this as a ruse to get extra cake; it compliments her guile. While her daughter is in the attic with the android, Martha waits at the bottom of the attic steps close to tears. Then, after regaining her emotional composure, she climbs the ladder to join them.

Production

In an interview in October 2016, Brooker revealed that "There was a whole extra idea for 'Be Right Back' too, where we’d see other people who’d been brought back from their social media profiles."^[1]

Critical reception

The episode received critical acclaim. The A.V. Club gave it an A-, describing it as an "audacious" series opener and adding "it's such a spare, haunting piece, focusing on one woman's grief in the face of the sudden loss of her significant other, and the 'careful what you wish for' clone she buys to replace him, initially filling the gap in her life but quickly proving deficient in so many ways."^[2] The Independent summed its review saying, "'Be Right Back' works so well because it has captured the social media zeitgeist. It was a lovely and touching story – more so than 'Fifteen Million Merits' – and a world away from the searingly acerbic Brooker that we are accustomed to. He can write an emotional and moving story that grabs you by the heart. The ending was bittersweet and avoided becoming overly tragic and depressing with a cliff suicide cliché."^[3] The Daily Telegraph rated it 4 out of 5 stars saying, "The show touched on important ideas – the false way we sometimes present ourselves online, and our growing addiction to virtual lives – but it was also a touching exploration of grief. To my mind it's the best thing Brooker has done."^[4]

According to Den of Geek, "By reducing his scope still further, 'Be Right Back' merely intensifies its dramatic strength. A sci-fi parable about bereavement and digital ghosts, this opening episode is appropriately haunting".^[5] Digital Spy wrote that "Black Mirror's series two premiere is creepy and moving in equal measure. It has real heart and characters that live and breathe – even when they don't", rating the episode 4 out of 5 stars.^[6] The Huffington Post said that "[t]he latest episode of Black Mirror, 'Be Right Back', is both a haunting vision of the future, and of what our relationship with technology could become. It is also a reminder of how our relationship with technology has changed since the mid-twentieth century."^[7] Empire ranked the first meeting between Martha and the Ash android as one of the 50 greatest sci-fi moments.^[8]

References

External links

• "Be Right Back" at the Internet Movie Database