I know Demon 79 is highly praised, but it did not work for me at all. Before anyone deliberately misreads this, my problem is not that the protagonist is South Asian. A British-Indian woman absolutely fits 1979 Britain, and the racism she experiences is relevant to that period. My problem is how heavily the episode uses her identity and the politics around it to instruct the viewer what to think.

Black Mirror has always been political, but its best episodes build a disturbing situation and allow you to reach the uncomfortable conclusion yourself. Here, the National Front politician is written with almost no complexity, the protagonist is positioned as obviously oppressed and morally understandable, and the audience is repeatedly pushed towards the approved interpretation. It felt less like satire and more like another piece of modern media giving the viewer a lecture from a very predictable far-left position.

I also found the lead performance unnatural. Her reactions, particularly when she first encounters the demon, felt theatrical rather than like genuine fear or disbelief. Anjana Vasan is clearly talented, but the heightened acting style made it difficult for me to believe in Nida as a real person.

The violence was another problem. Nida is a small, inexperienced woman, yet she manages to kill much larger men using rocks, a hammer and small blades with surprisingly little resistance. Size does not make someone invincible, and surprise plus a weapon can overcome physical strength, but the repeated ease of these killings stretched credibility. Violence is usually chaotic, exhausting and difficult. The episode treated it almost like a dark comic montage whenever the plot needed her to succeed.

I understand that Demon 79 was intentionally presented as “Red Mirror” and leaned more into supernatural horror and dark comedy. But for me, it lacked the psychological realism, ambiguity and intellectual restraint of episodes like White Christmas, Playtest and Shut Up and Dance. Instead of making me question my assumptions, it mostly told me which assumptions I was expected to have.