Seeing Black Mirror backlash is curious. I enjoy the show.

I think a very large element of it has to do with how people pitch the show to each other. If you go into it with the mindset of "This is going to try to moralize to me about cellphones, harumpf", it's bound to seem heavy handed and disappointing. My personal mindset the first time I watched it was "Oh hey, it's 2011 and there's a British sci-fi show coming out, it'll probably be decent" - instant torrent - and I suspect I had a much different experience of it from more recent viewers, who are carrying more cultural bias into the experience.

I wouldn't agree that it's poorly written or hyperbolic. The core roots of sci-fi isn't Jules Verne saying how spooky a squid is, it's H.G. Wells creating a slightly modified, often very personal reality in order to more fully examine the people inside the story. It does the later extremely effectively in my opinion, but yes, like all tv shows some episodes are better than others.

(Also, I would say it's some of the only actual sci-fi TV that's been produced in about 20-30 years based on the "Star Wars is fantasy, not sci-fi" principle, but I feel like that's just inviting argument)

I also don't agree with the idea that it's trying to portray technology as a boogeyman. The technology almost always acts as a facilitator, not a primary mover. In other words, a broader modern version of "Guns don't kill people, people kill people". It doesn't villainize tech, it highlights it capabilities as an enabler, then (usually) focuses in on the negative side of that enabling.

I havn't seen the third season yet, and I'm probably sounding like more of a fan than I am. Just reading through this thread felt profoundly disconcerting in a "Are we watching the same thing?" sort of way.

(Oh, and I havn't seen season 3, so that might be moralistic garbage. I'll mainly stand behind the episode with the Irma Thomas song, and the one where Jon Hamm emotionally tortures a woman).