Black Mirror

Series two, episode one
You’d be hard pushed to call the first part of Charlie Brooker’s returning series a comedy. In fact, ‘Be Right Back’ is often downright sad. Martha (Hayley Atwell, giving a career-best performance in a demanding role) is stuck in an isolated countryside cottage, mourning the loss of her partner, Ash (Domhnall Gleeson) – a guy she loved deeply in spite of his irritating obsession with Twitter. Then the opportunity arises to reconstruct his personality through his online history of emails, tweets, Facebook updates et al. Initially appalled, Martha’s resolve starts to crumble as her loneliness intensifies, before some unexpected news forces her hand…

Even if, as with some of the first series of ‘Black Mirror’, the denouement can’t quite live up to the restless invention and plausible clairvoyance of what’s gone before, this is still high-calibre television bursting with ideas and emotional engagement.