There is perhaps no show in the last decade that has pushed the boundaries of television as boldly as Black Mirror, says streaming columnist NICK OVERALL.

Horror. Romance. Comedy. Coming-of-age. Almost every genre has been ticked off by Black Mirror, the sci-fi anthology series that streams on Netflix. And it seems the ideas aren’t running dry anytime soon.

The show returns on April 10 with six new episodes for its seventh season.

Some are the same length as what you’d get with a feature film.

For those who haven’t dabbled in Black Mirror before, the show is something of a Twilight Zone for the tech age.

Each episode features a stand-alone story that is fascinated with how technology could shape or destroy our future.

Highlights have included The Entire History of You, in which a marriage breaks down as a husband and wife obsessively check recordings of each other’s memories; Beyond the Sea, depicting a reality where people can transfer their consciousness between bodies and Nosedive, a tale about a world where each person is given a social rank visible to everyone else, kind of like an Uber rating, that anyone can review at any time.

Over the course of its 28 episodes so far there have been some big hits and total misses but on the whole Black Mirror has remained one of the most fascinating things on television.

In one episode viewers got to decide how the story goes by pressing buttons on their remote. In another, the protagonist is haunted by a television show that streams her life to the entire world via a platform called Streamberry, an eerily accurate parody of Netflix itself.

Even when the series doesn’t quite hit the mark, its fourth-wall breaking experimentation still feels fresh.

The show’s controversial first episode is notorious for turning people off but those interested can start with any of the seasons.

These days anyone who wants to give Black Mirror a try can scroll through the episodes, pick a premise that intrigues them and strap in for the ride.

So what can fans expect from season seven?

Black Mirror’s creators like to stay quiet on details to protect their infamous plot twists and it is often best to go into each episode blind, but showrunner Charlie Brooker has still dropped a few hints, saying season seven will have “a mix of genres and styles”.

“Some of them are deeply unpleasant, some are quite funny and some are emotional.”

The new season will also include a sequel to one of the show’s most acclaimed episodes, the Emmy-winning USS Callister. Brooker has also revealed that some characters from previous seasons will reappear for the new stories.

This is a first for Black Mirror. Hopefully, it all plays into fresh ideas rather than just being a rehash of winning formulas to please fans.

So influential is the series that it actually sparked an effort to revive the very show that helped inspire it.

In 2019 a reboot of The Twilight Zone got the greenlight but the show’s focus on supernatural horror failed to resonate, lasting only two seasons before getting the axe.

Season six of Black Mirror also tried to stray into more supernatural territory with some of its episodes but received huge amounts of backlash from viewers.

It seems the appetite for these disturbing stories is centred entirely around our modern fears of technology.

And why wouldn’t it be?

We live in an age where people are more frightened of what their phone is listening to rather than any poltergeist lurking in the corridor.

The advent of artificial intelligence has sparked a whole new wave of anxieties.

Black Mirror has tapped into the potential of AI before, but in a new world where bots such as Chat GPT are becoming part of everyday life, it feels like there’s plenty of dystopic potential for the writers to tap into.

In 2025 it’s the ghost in the machine that has become the real nightmare.