Picture, if you will, a world where our digital devices seem eerily alive; where technology lets us block unwanted people not only from our social media streams but from our eyes and ears; and where the maladroit can receive stealthy, real-time pickup and dating advice from debonair coaches resembling the “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm.
如果你愿意，可以在心里勾勒出这样一个世界，在这里，我们的数码设备似乎有着神秘的生机；技术手段可以让我们屏蔽不想见到的人，不仅是在社交媒体，也可以让此人从我们的眼前或耳边消失；笨拙的人可以从温文尔雅、长得像《广告狂人》(Mad Men)里乔恩·哈姆(Jon Hamm)的教练那里得到隐秘的实时的把妹及约会建议。
This is the very near future imagined by “Black Mirror,” the British anthology drama that mines cautionary, “Twilight Zone”-style narratives from our modern-day obsessions with gadgetry and the Internet, and which returns to American television on Thursday for a holiday-themed special called “White Christmas.”
这是英国诗选剧《黑镜》(Black Mirror)里为我们构想的一个不久的将来，从我们当今对电子小玩意与互联网的迷恋之中发掘《迷离时空》(Twilight Zone)式的警世叙事，周四，美国电视台将播出该剧的节日特别集，《白色圣诞》(White Christmas)。
Beneath that seemingly cheerful title lurks an ambiguous premise that begins with Mr. Hamm and Rafe Spall as men who find themselves in a cabin for unknown reasons. A sinister episode full of the series’s trademark twists and turns and a macabre sense of humor unfolds.
欢快的主题之下潜藏着含糊的前提，剧集开始，哈姆与拉菲·斯波(Rafe Spall)饰演两个男人，由于未知的原因呆在一个木屋里。这是凶险的一集，充满这个系列招牌式的转折，渐渐展现出令人毛骨悚然的幽默感。
Mr. Hamm explained in an interview that “Black Mirror” aims a distorted lens at society to show “where it’s probably going, which is further — and maybe further than we want.”
哈姆在采访中解释说，《黑镜》用扭曲的透镜审视社会，展现出“未来社会可能会是什么样子——可能比我们的希望走得更远”。
While “Black Mirror,” which is shown on Channel 4 in Britain, is often skeptical of phenomena that spread rapidly and unpredictably, it has also benefited from virality.
《黑镜》在英国第4频道播出，尽管它经常讽刺社会中那种出人意料、快速传播的现象，但它也得益于网络上的“病毒传播”(virality)。
The series, which had its first American showings on the satellite broadcast service DirecTV (which will also first show the “White Christmas” special on its Audience channel), has recently been added to Netflix’s on-demand library. It now has its best chance to infiltrate the cultural consciousness of America, where its absurdist explorations of progress gone amok will resonate just as loudly.
这部剧集首次在美国播放是通过卫星广播服务DirectV（《白色圣诞》特别集的首播也是在它旗下的Audience频道），最近也加入了Netflix的点播库。现在它有了极好的机会渗入美国的文化意识，它对“人类进步变得疯狂”这个主题的荒诞主义式探索肯定会在美国引起强烈反响。
As Charlie Brooker, the creator of “Black Mirror,” explained, what seems to unite people these days is the clumsy way we adapt to new technology and media.
《黑镜》的主笔查理·布鲁克(Charlie Brooker)解释，如今让人们联合在一起的，似乎是我们去适应新技术与新媒体的笨拙方式。
“We’re like people who are playing a driving video game for the first time, and we’re smashing into the walls left and right,” Mr. Brooker said in an interview. “As we get better as a species, we’ll master it. But at the moment we’re colliding with things all the time.”
“我们就像那些第一次玩驾驶类电子游戏的人，不断撞到左边或者右边的墙上，”布鲁克在接受采访时说，“作为一个物种，我们在进步，我们会掌握它的。但现在，我们正处在与各种事物不断碰撞的时刻。”
Mr. Brooker, a British writer, producer and columnist for The Guardian, made his reputation as a satirist and host of shows like “Screenwipe” and “Newswipe,” offering caustic commentary on events and media coverage of them.
布鲁克是一位英国作家、制作人与《卫报》(The Guardian)的专栏作家，他以撰写讽刺作品，主持“屏幕清理”(Screenwipe)和“新闻清理”(Newswipe)等节目闻名，这些节目专门对时事和媒体对这些时事的报道方式发表尖刻的评论。
He also wrote a hit British horror mini-series, “Dead Set,” in 2008, which imagined a zombie apocalypse taking place around the reality series “Big Brother.”
2008年，他还写过一部轰动的英国恐怖迷你剧《死亡片场》(Dead Set)，想像出一个僵尸末日世界，发生在《老大哥》(Big Brother)真人秀片场。

For a follow-up, Mr. Brooker said he wanted to try his version of a series like Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone,” which offered parables about racism, McCarthyism and nuclear paranoia, concealed in the garb of traditional science fiction.
关于续作，布鲁克说他想尝试拍出洛德·塞林(Rod Serling)的《迷离时空》式的剧集，它表面是一部传统的科幻剧，实则蕴含着关于种族主义、麦卡锡主义与核妄想的寓言。
The logical 21st-century update would take aim at our relationship with technology, but Mr. Brooker said he wanted to “deliberately unnerve the viewers” rather than scold them.
21世纪合乎逻辑的更新版无疑是针对人与技术之间的关系，但布鲁克说，他希望“故意令观众烦躁不安”，而不是去责骂他们。
“Most dramas tend to reassure the viewer, I think,” he said. “Even crime procedurals are really about the good guy catching the bad guy.”
“我觉得大多数剧集想要去安抚观众，”他说，“就算是犯罪剧，其实也是关于好人抓坏人的。”
What he wanted to create, he said, was “an anthology that would potentially unsettle, and speak about things other than ‘Isn’t crime terrible?’ and ‘Isn’t the class divide an awful thing?’ ”
他说，自己想拍的是“一部诗选剧，其中涌动着令人不安的东西，内容不仅仅是‘犯罪难道不可怕吗’和‘阶级划分难道不糟糕吗’。”
“Black Mirror,” which had its first three-episode season in 2011, gained attention as much for its use of actors like Rory Kinnear (“Skyfall”) and Jessica Brown Findlay (“Downton Abbey”) as for its provocative premises.
《黑镜》于2011年首播，只有三集，挑衅的主题很快引起人们的注意，《大破天幕杀机》(Skyfall)影星罗里·金奈尔(Rory Kinnear)和《唐顿庄园》(Downton Abbey)影星杰西卡·布朗·芬德利(Jessica Brown Findlay)的加盟也颇引人注目。
Its debut episode, “The National Anthem,” focused on a kidnapping plot in which the captor of a royal family member said he would release her only if the prime minister (Mr. Kinnear) performed an act of bestiality on live television.
第一集《国歌》(The National Anthem)讲述了一桩绑架阴谋，作案者绑架了一名皇室成员，宣称首相（金奈尔饰）必须在电视直播中兽交，他才会释放人质。
“Often with ‘Black Mirror,’ the ideas really make me laugh,” said Mr. Brooker, who wrote that episode. “That probably doesn’t come across in the final show.”
“《黑镜》里的点子通常会让我大笑，”布鲁克说，他也是这一集的编剧。“不过这最后的一集可能不会让人笑。”
Mr. Spall said that the format of “Black Mirror,” in which each episode offers a self-contained story, was a welcome corrective to a television environment overrun by serialized narratives.
斯波说，《黑镜》这种每一集都讲述一个完整故事的形式对于当今的电视环境是一种有益的矫正，现在的电视里连续性叙事太多了。
“Starting a new one can take such a huge amount of energy,” Mr. Spall said. “You go: ‘Am I going to start this series? Am I going to watch the entire back catalog of “The Sopranos”? God, this is going to be three months of my life, gone.’ ”
“重新开始一个新角色要花费大量精力，”斯波说，“你会觉得‘我要接这部剧吗？我得看完《黑道家族》(The Sopranos)的片尾字幕吗？天哪，我人生中的三个月就这么没了。’”
Even before “Black Mirror” was shown in the United States, Mr. Brooker said he began hearing from Hollywood types who were finding it on shady torrent sites “or getting surreptitious DVD copies or whatever.”
布鲁克说，《黑镜》在美国上映之前，就开始有好莱坞的人和他联系，他们是从可疑的种子网站下载，“或者私下传播的DVD之类渠道”看到这部剧集的。
Mr. Hamm (who watched the show legally on DirecTV) said he was introduced to it by the “Saturday Night Live” alumnus Bill Hader.
哈姆通过DirecTV的服务合法地观看了这部剧集，他说是曾在“周六夜现场”(Saturday Night Live)合作过的比尔·哈德尔(Bill Hader)介绍他看的。
When he was approached to star in the “Black Mirror” special, Mr. Hamm said he did not have to worry about when or if it would reach American audiences, or what size audience would see it.
后来有人邀请他出演《黑镜》特别集，至于美国观众是否能够看到这部剧，将在什么时候看到这部剧，乃至观众人数多少，哈姆说自己用不着担心。
As he has learned from his experiences on “Mad Men,” Mr. Hamm said, “No one cares about ratings anymore.”
他说，出演《广告狂人》的经历让他明白，“现在已经没有人在乎收视率了”。
“The stigma of not being on network television, which was the gold standard forever, is just obliterated,” he said.
“节目能在电视台播放曾经是雷打不动的黄金标准，但是如今，不在电视台播放已经不算什么耻辱了，”他说。
With the curtain about to come down on “Mad Men,” Mr. Hamm has been appearing in offbeat television roles, playing a morphine-abusing physician during the Russian Revolution on “A Young Doctor’s Notebook” (alongside Daniel Radcliffe) and the voice of a talking toilet on “Bob’s Burgers.”
随着《广告狂人》即将落下帷幕，哈姆也开始饰演一些另类的电视角色，他在《一位年轻医生的笔记》(A Young Doctor’s Notebook)中饰演俄国革命期间一个滥用吗啡的医生（该片还有丹尼尔·雷德克里夫[Daniel Radcliffe]加盟），还在《开心汉堡店》(Bob’s Burgers)里为一个会说话的马桶配音。
“It becomes simply about content,” Mr. Hamm said. “If enough people are in your ear — or your virtual ear — about a specific piece of content,” audiences will seek it out.
“一切只是关于内容的，”哈姆说，“如果有很多人对着你的耳朵——或是虚拟的耳朵——谈论某段特定的内容，”观众就会发现的。
Not that Mr. Hamm is using social media to engage in these discussions, but as “Black Mirror” has taught him, he said, “It’s not going away.”
哈姆并没有参与社交网络上的类似讨论，但《黑镜》让他明白，“这一切不会消失”。
Nor is it worth his energy to complain about it, he said. “I just end up sounding like the old man on the lawn, shaking his fist at those dang teenagers.”
他说，这也不值得自己花费精力去抱怨，“否则我就会像是个站在草坪上的老家伙，挥舞着拳头咒骂该死的年轻人。”
Mr. Spall, who admitted to checking his email “100 times a day,” said that expanding his Internet presence any further would be a devastating mistake.
斯波承认自己“每天查100次邮件”，他说，如果继续扩展自己的网络活动，肯定会是灾难性的错误。
“For me, that would be like saying, ‘Hmm, I think I’m going to take up heroin,’ ” he explained. “ ‘I’ve never tried it before, but I think I’m going to get into smack.’ ”
“对于我来说，就好像，‘嗯，我该来点儿海洛因了，’”他说。“我以前从来没试过，但我想我肯定会上瘾的。”