BLACK MIRROR
Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: The new season of Charlie Brooker’s futuristic anthology series, a technology-focused cross between The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, arrives today, with six new episodes devoted to the dreamy, the nightmarish, and the absolutely unsettling. The flagship of the new season, so to speak, is “USS Callister,” a movie-length episode starring Jesse Plemons (of Friday Night Lights and Breaking Bad, just for starters) as a videogame designer who finds a way to clone his co-workers and insert them into an imaginary world he alone can visit – a world based on his favorite sci-fi TV show, a clear salute to the Star Trek of old. It’s a really good episode, touching (in an unexpectedly timely way) on power abuses by men towards women (as personified, in this creepy story, by Cristin Milioti, pictured). And the other episodes are a strong bunch, too, especially “Arkangel” (directed by Jodie Foster, starring Rosemarie DeWitt as an overly protective mother, and “Hang the DJ,” about an especially controlling new dating app. Even though this season drops two days before the end of 2017, it still made my Top 10 TV list for the year -- because I saw it in advance.