What “Black Mirror” and “The Twilight Zone” (1959) Have in Common

The Twilight Zone (1959) — or Além da Imaginação, as it’s known in Brazil — is a brilliant series with exceptional writing, direction, and performances that still surpass expectations today. And this is a project from almost a century ago. Rod Serling’s history with this original work is fascinating, and I can’t wait to write about it in detail. In fact, I’ll be dedicating an entire post to the series.For now, I’ll try to keep things brief.

If you’ve never seen the 1959 version, it’s an anthology series. The episodes are loosely connected, but you don’t need to watch them in order — each tells a different story with entirely different characters.Each one is about 25 minutes long, which I find remarkable, especially considering every episode delivers a plot twist. Honestly, when I first heard about the show, I didn’t believe it could be done — until it proved me wrong. Rod Serling was simply a genius.

It’s also a classic and a revolutionary piece of television. Just imagine audiences in the ’50s and ’60s watching something like this! I can even sense a touch of Hitchcock in its DNA.

Image 1: Image from "The Twilight Zone -1959" and "Black Mirror - 2017"

Black Mirror, Netflix’s brainchild, was innovative in its own right — unsettling, sometimes to the point of leaving us borderline traumatized. Its well-crafted episodes delivered those signature plot twists, and there was always a subtle thread connecting them. That’s when I realized the link between the two series:

it’s as if The Twilight Zone (1959) were the ancestor of all “dark” and curiously twisted anthologies that followed, leaving its mark not only on film, but also on music and pop culture. Other shows have carried that torch too, like Love, Death & Robots — but I’ll save that for another post.

Both series in this title share sharp writing, great twists, and outstanding performances. Honestly, I could talk about this for hours. But there’s something deeper tying them together — something beyond the visual. After all, the 1959 series is entirely in black and white, with that unmistakable vintage aura.

Black Mirror has a singular atmosphere, that intangible element that makes us uneasy about a future that may arrive sooner than we expect. The Twilight Zone (1959) lingers in a different way — it leaves us mulling over realities and events that lie just beyond our perception. Both awaken that peculiar curiosity for the unknown, making us neither fully understand nor forget what we’ve seen, leaving their mark long after the credits roll. And they share one last, haunting trait: planting that quiet, persistent question in our minds about where, exactly, fiction stops being just fiction.

Box "The Twilight Zone 1959"