Black Mirror TV

Every so often a British drama comes along that’s so brilliant, you must ride a TARDIS to London just to watch. (Note: ”Ride a TARDIS” definitely isn’t slang for ”secretly download while pretending to play World of Warcraft,” because that would be wrong.) The cult-favorite sci-fi series Black Mirror is one of those shows, and now that all six episodes are airing on DirecTV, Americans can geek out over the Twilight Zone of our time. Each episode is self-contained, so start with the best: ”The Entire History of You” or ”Be Right Back.” The former follows friends (including Toby Kebbell and Jodie Whittaker) who record their memories to screen them for others or replay them in their own heads, and the latter focuses on a couple (Hayley Atwell and Domhnall Gleeson) who use their email cache to…uh, work through grief. If that sounds vague, well, the less you know, the better. Let’s just say both episodes are gripping cautionary tales about how technology makes people less human. And the others — there’s a smart satire of American Idol and a thriller that involves unmentionable acts with a pig — have inspired heated ”What would you do?” debates among fans, a group that’s getting bigger all the time. (Robert Downey Jr. is set to produce a film version of ”The Entire History of You.”) When it’s over, you’ll need that TARDIS to transport you back to before you first heard about Black Mirror, so that each episode can surprise you all over again. A