Andrew Scott is astonishing as a grief-stricken taxi driver gone rogue

From Fargo to Happy Valley, kidnappings on screen never go well. In Smithereens, part of the fifth instalment of Netflix’s anthology series Black Mirror, a kidnapping goes just about as badly as it could.

Sherlock and Fleabag’s Andrew Scott, who with his manic eyes has become the slightly-mad man of the moment, played Chris, a grief-stricken Uber-style driver who listens to meditation tapes in his car while waiting for a fare. He only accepts bookings from one place – outside the London office of a fictional, though distinctly Twitter-y messaging app called Smithereen. That’s because Chris has a deep-seated, seething grievance against the app: all he wants to do is tell its super-rich American founder Billy Bower (Topher Grace) just how angry he is. 

Inevitably, things start very badly and then get much worse. Chris picks the wrong guy to kidnap (Damson Idris), does all of the things a half-competent kidnapper wouldn't, and as a result quickly finds himself in a stand-off with armed police and negotiators. Pretty soon this former IT teacher has sparked off something close to a global crisis, with the police, the FBI and the Smithereen board all in on the negotiations.

Here’s where this episode flounders just a little: it picks, in Chris, a central character who is supposed to be both tech-savvy and intelligent, and yet also by turns tech-illiterate and stupid. Why, for example, would Chris, a former IT teacher and Smithereen early adopter, not realise that using a phone or an app means you can be tracked and identified? Why would he not put his kidnapper in the boot, rather than letting him sit on the back seat with a bag on his head (and hence get spotted by police)?

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