Hotel Reverie

This was actually a good episode ruined by a single character that is Brandy Friday, i didn't mind Awkwafina that much, she was bland but she did nothing to ruin the episode. Hats off to Emma Corrin, she single handedly carries this entire episode on her shoulders, mesmerizing performance. Dear showrunners, you need to get the casting right when you have such a good premise. Brandy Friday was horrible, i have never seen the actress before, maybe she's a fine actress in her other works but dear god she was insufferable in this episode. An easy 8 and above episode brought down to an average 6 for me.

I've never seen anything from this actress before, but after watching her in this, I'm shocked she has any sort of career. The worst bits were in the movie-within-a-movie, where she stood out like a sore thumb. I suspect a small part of that may have been intentional, but why would the people within the movie cast the actor she's portraying if she was so obviously bad. And then the scenes outside the movie-within-a-movie aren't much better. I don't generally like to blame one person for a movie or show not working, but she's simply terrible -- so much so that after a half hour or so, I gave up on this episode.

As a huge fan of Black Mirror, I was really looking forward to this episode, but it ended up being quite a disappointment. The idea and storyline were just okay, nothing particularly groundbreaking or memorable. However, what really ruined the episode for me was the acting by Issa. It felt like she had never acted before, and her performance was so unconvincing that it completely took me out of the story. I was left wondering if she had any prior acting experience because it certainly didn't seem like it. Given the high standards set by previous Black Mirror episodes, especially in season 7, I expected much better casting choices. All the other episodes in this season were quite good, with the exception of episode 3, which unfortunately fell flat.

Some really nice moments and the concept was entertaining. But there were many illogical moments that were very frustrating to watch. E.g. With Redream; it's a company with 'state of the art' technology, which hires A List actors, but it gets the actors to run through their scenes live, with absolutely no ability to pause, cut or rewind? Its unbelievable that they would use a system that would waste resources like that and risk scenes and storylines not going to plan.

As many others have said as well, Issa Ray as Brandy was so oddly awkward, her speech and facial expressions and tone of voice did not fit in place here. She is supposed to come across as a bit odd and out of place as she's a modern woman in the world of 100 years ago, but her interpretation of this is jarring and unnatural to watch. It makes her look like she is just a bad actor or was given terrible direction.

Which takes me back to my first point, as if the producers and directors of Redream would allow the kind of bad acting (of the character Brandy) to continue in the scenes without doing a second take! There was no pause button built into the million dollar system used to record??

Emma Corrin was wonderful and the concept of acting within a virtual AI world was really interesting though. I hope they give this concept another go but improve on it.

Good plot, nice cinematography and bad, very bad choice for the protagonist. While Emma Corrin is stunning everytime she appeared in the screen, Issa Rae make us to regret to watch the episode. No chemistry with Emma, no charisma, no talent. But, as is necessary to have someone to please the "intelligentsia" and their "rules", Issa Rae is there ruining everything every time she's "acting".

Everybody else is ok, even Awkafina. I hope Charlie Brooker have understood that talent is beyond color and gender. If he had chosen Lupita Nyong'o or Jennifer Hudson, the outcome would be much better. Shame on you, Charlie.