page_title: Be Right Back
section_title: Comparisons to other media
hierarchical_section_title: Be Right Back / Analysis / Comparisons to other media
caption_attribution_description: Promotional photo of Boris Karloff from The Bride of Frankenstein as Frankenstein's monster.
context_page_description: "Be Right Back" is the first episode of the second series of British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker, directed by Owen Harris, and first aired on Channel 4 on 11 February 2013.
  The episode tells the story of Martha, a young woman whose boyfriend Ash Starmer is killed in a car accident. As she mourns him, she discovers that technology now allows her to communicate with an artificial intelligence imitating Ash, and reluctantly decides to try it. "Be Right Back" had two sources of inspiration: the question of whether to delete a dead friend's phone number from one's contacts, and the idea that Twitter posts could be made by software mimicking dead people.
  "Be Right Back" explores the theme of grief; it is a melancholy story similar to the previous episode, "The Entire History of You". The episode received positive reviews, with the performances of Atwell and Gleeson receiving universal acclaim. Some critics believe it to be the best episode of Black Mirror, though the ending was met with criticism.
context_section_description: In contrast to the previous series opener, "The National Anthem", Brooker described "Be Right Back" as "more earnest than people might expect" as well as "melancholy" and "very intimate and personal". Lambie made similar comments. Lambie and Jeffery both compared the episode to "The Entire History of You", an episode from the first series written by Jesse Armstrong. Yoshida noted that "The Entire History of You" begins with Liam obsessing over a job interview, which he is able to replay through his grain device. Yoshida compared his inability to drop the matter with Martha's choice to "forever nurse herself on a slow drip of delayed acceptance" by replacing Ash with an android. Maura Johnston of The Boston Globe said that both episodes have memory as a central concept and "[play] on the ideas of love and the ideal".
  Richard Hand of The Conversation described the episode as a "clever reworking" of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Yoshida compared the artificial Ash to Frankenstein's monster, with Hand making the same comparison, writing that both are "resurrected figure[s]" that "can never be human". While Frankenstein demonstrates that the "vital essence of humanity" is more than a collection of body parts, "Be Right Back" shows it is not the "digital presence" of a person.
  Reviewers have used the analogy of "Be Right Back" being like "The Monkey's Paw" with futuristic technology. Lambie compared the storyline to Ubik by Philip K. Dick and 1984 film Starman, and the cinematography to 2010 film Never Let Me Go. TheWrap noted that the episode "shares some similarities" with 2013 film Her.
caption: The episode has been compared to Shelley's Frankenstein, with the artificial Ash paralleling Frankenstein's monster.
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