1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four) influenced Black Mirror

Brooker's anthology is the Orwellian apparatus rebuilt out of consumer technology, and the series says so in its structure: the surveillance is not imposed by a ministry, it is bought, enjoyed and rated. The specific inheritance is Orwell's insistence that the machinery matters less than the consent. Fifteen Million Merits is Room 101 rearranged as a talent show; The Entire History of You is the memory hole run backwards, with nothing forgettable. Filed MEDIUM: the debt is to a tradition Orwell defined rather than to a text Brooker adapts, and the series is at least as indebted to The Twilight Zone for its shape.