“Hotel Reverie” is hands-down the most beautiful-looking episode Black Mirror has ever made. An homage to classic black-and-white cinema, its aesthetic is first expertly reproduced, and then enhanced by the addition of director Haolu Wang and her team’s own imaginative bursts. It’s romantic, it’s funny, and thanks to a stellar performance from Emma Corrin channelling the buttoned-up passion of 1940s leading ladies, it’s also very moving.

The second longest episode in season seven, “Hotel Reverie” takes 77 minutes to tell its story, which is really several stories fitted Matryoshka Doll-style inside one another. On the outer edge is Brandy Friday (Issa Rae), a modern-day Hollywood actor frustrated at being relegated to roles as sexy sidekicks to “one of the Ryans” or, as she describes it, lead parts in “Sundance misery porn”. They both put her in the same box, says Brandy, and she wants more. Ironically, Brandy finds more inside a box, or more properly, inside the “redream” computer system.

Head of classic British filmmakers Keyworth Studios, Judith Keyworth (Harriet Walter) is also frustrated. Despite its vaunted reputation in her father’s time, the studio is struggling to survive in the modern day. When producer Kimmy (Awkwafina) offers to remake Hotel Reverie, one of Keyworth’s most famous titles, using new tech to replace the lead with a current star, Judith goes for it. Redream drops an actor’s consciousness into a fully functioning digital scan of the movie and lets them act it out in real time. After it’s turned down by the Ryans, the gender-swapped part goes to Brandy.