People who like Black Mirror might be interested in Electric Dreams as well, which is a sci-fi anthology series that started out on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom but has since become available through Amazon Video in the United States. Like its name suggests, it is based on the stories of Philip K. Dick, who was one of the most influential sci-fi authors of the 20th century. In fact, a fair number of people should be familiar with Dick because of the adaptations of his better-known stories, with examples ranging from Blade Runner to Minority Report and Total Recall. Electric Dreams is a collection of episodes that adapt some of Dick’s lesser-known stories, which are nonetheless well-worth experiencing for people who are interested in science fiction.
Why Should You Consider Watching Electric Dreams?
There are a number of reasons that people should consider checking out Electric Dreams. For starters, it is both similar but at the same time, not the same as Black Mirror when it comes to its content. On the one hand, much of its material is concerned about how new technologies will change how we live; on the other hand, while it is rather cynical about the general direction of those changes, it maintains an interesting optimism when it comes to the people who will have to cope with it. As a result, while the comparison between Electric Dreams and Black Mirror is an obvious one, Electric Dreams is more than capable of standing on its own as something of its own.
Speaking of which, it is interesting to note that Electric Dreams is more than capable of standing on its own as its own collection of stories as well as opposed to being nothing more than a collection of adaptations of Dick’s lesser-known stories. Simply put, Dick was as influenced by his time as any other author, meaning that some of his stories are not as relevant to the present as they were to the past. For example, there is a story in which fallout shelters become a must-have for suburbanites, which seems more than a little bit odd to us because the threat of an all-out nuclear war is not as common in the present in spite of the latest in international political shenanigans. As a result, Electric Dreams has gone to the step of updating its stories for the present, as shown by how nuclear shelters have been replaced by smartwatches that are a little bit too useful for surveillance purposes. In fact, it is interesting to note that the people behind the series have actually gone to the trouble of retaining futuristic elements from Dick’s own stories while adding more futuristic elements from more modern sources, with the result that the series can seem like a rather strange but nonetheless interesting blend of what the past thought the future would look like and what the present thinks the future will look like.
Summed up, Electric Dream has a lot to offer to interested individuals. Something that is particularly true because it is an anthology, meaning that if a viewer doesn’t like one of its stories, they might like one of the others. After all, each one was done with the involvement of different groups of people, meaning that they can offer very different experiences.
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