Abstract

Crime stories originating from Northern Europe have enjoyed critical and, to varying degrees, commercial success in the fields of cinema, television and literature, spawning translations, adaptations, and even international imitations paying visible homage to the distinctive aesthetic and thematic characteristics of the form, which have become so recognisable they have evolved into a generic type of their own – ‘Nordic Noir’. In this article, Dan Ward examines Black Mirror's conspicuous mobilisation of the conventions of Nordic Noir in two distinctive episodes. Drawing on a range of critical perspectives and noteworthy examples of the genre, Ward investigates the repurposing of Scandinavian crime fiction's familiar social critique to contemporary concerns around creeping surveillance and the rise of corporate technocracy in neoliberal democracies.