A futuristic series that is more about the people than about high-tech

Season 2 of of the Netflix series Black Mirror is strong start to finish, each of the narratives standing up well as intense interpersonal dramas as well as staying with the theme of the series: the potential effect of technology on life in the future. The world of these dramas is recognizable and familiar in every way except that, in each, there have been significant and at present almost incomprehensible advances in technology: virtual reality in particular but also social media, spyware, robotics. The final episode in the season, for example, has John Hamm running a live dating-advice service (through some kind of cranial implant he speaks to a young man guiding him - like "Bogart" in Play it Again, Sam" as he tries to pick up a woman at an office party, with tragic results) and also as an expert in downloading brains: through some sort of operation scientists and doctors are able to download an reproduce the entire electrical code of a human brain and make a copy, so the person is actually leading two simultaneous lives. It sounds cumbersome and kind of hoaky, and it could be, except that the technology an scifi elements are never what the show is about - they are accepting aspects, part of the fabric of future life. In another episode a virtual figure, a cartoon character seen only on a video screen, runs for Parliament. Hm. Could happen. A theme that runs through most of the episodes is martial infidelity - the technology plays a role in the discovery of the infidelity, but again the story is about the people their difficult, sometimes violent, often confused inter-relations and not about the wonders of high-tech.