Some episodes of Black Mirror imagine a future distorted by technology. Common People does something more disturbing. It examines the systems already around us and stretches them only slightly to expose a reality we’re already complicit in. The result is not science fiction. It’s a diagnosis.
The story follows Amanda and Mike, a working-class couple pushed into the arms of a biotech corporation after Amanda is diagnosed with a brain tumor. The solution offered is technological but familiar: a cloud-based system that keeps Amanda’s consciousness alive via synthetic brain tissue. The cost? A subscription. And not just a baseline fee, but a labyrinth of upgrades, premium features, and service tiers that dictate everything from data access to ad suppression. In other words, survival has become a payment plan.
What makes Common People so anxiety-inducing is its logic. Everything functions smoothly within a commercial framework that treats human life as a service. The company isn’t portrayed as evil. It’s efficient, polite, and responsive. The representatives smile. The contracts are clear. The outcomes are devastating.
The most unsettling character may be the corporate representative, played with unnerving precision by Tracee Ellis Ross. Her performance captures the sanitized detachment of institutional power. She is physically present, polite, even attentive, but entirely unreachable when it comes to logic or empathy. Her language is calibrated to deflect emotion. Her presence is designed to suggest care while denying accountability. She is not a villain in the traditional sense, but a representative of a structure that absorbs human suffering without ever acknowledging it.
Mike’s descent is gradual and deeply painful to watch. He doesn’t rebel. He navigates. He adapts. He gives up dignity before he gives up on Amanda. Eventually, even love becomes something leveraged against him. When Amanda’s consciousness begins inserting advertisements into casual conversation, it’s not portrayed for shock value. It’s portrayed as a matter-of-fact consequence of unpaid features. This is a world where grief, memory, and intimacy are monetized like any other digital product.
The emotional core of the episode is not just in the tragedy of Amanda’s condition. It is in the quiet devastation of watching two people become financially and psychologically dismantled by a system that claims to serve them. It is in the realization that the system does not fail. It performs exactly as designed.
In a culture where access to healthcare, education, and stability increasingly hinges on financial subscriptions and tiered access, Common People feels less like fiction and more like a mirror. It does not warn us about what might come. It shows us what we’ve already accepted.
Photos courtesy of Netflix.
Black Mirror: Season 7 is now streaming exclusively on Netflix
