The documentarians in “Loch Henry” are Davis (Samuel Blenkin) and his American girlfriend Pia (Myha’la Herrold), who met at film school in London. Netflix even has its own subheading on the “true crime” Wikipedia page. After all, Netflix is still churning out those docs (and docudramas) every year productions like Making a Murderer, The Keepers, and Don’t F**k With Cats are as responsible for the genre’s proliferation as anything.
Goldman have provided a wealth of solid true-crime parodies in recent years, the genre still makes sense as a target, especially for the type of spooky character-driven story that Black Mirror often nails. And while shows like American Vandal, Only Murders in the Building, and Paul T. The true-crime documentary fad fits pretty squarely into that category, though it’s a subject that has gone unaddressed so far in Black Mirror. Some of those are good (“The National Anthem,” “ Shut Up and Dance”) and some are bad (“The Waldo Moment,” “ Smithereens”), but there’s a common theme in all of them: You don’t have to travel far into the future to see the ways technology can hurt people or to witness a dystopian media landscape that prioritizes “content creation” over individuals.
Almost every season has an episode that strays from the speculative genre, tackling the current moment instead. Black Mirror is a show about technology, but it’s not always a show about the future.