'On n'est pas dans Black Mirror': ambivalent optimism in Osmosis

Osmosis (Netflix, 2019) is only the second French television series to be commissioned by Netflix. Set in a near-future Paris and dramatising the final beta-testing and launch of a revolutionary dating application, the programme has frequently been compared to Black Mirror (Channel 4 Television Corporation/Netflix, 2011-19). This article argues that the parallel is unhelpful since Osmosis does not contain the underlying technophobia that characterises the UK series and is largely, though not entirely, optimistic about the implications of artificial intelligence and technological advances for humanity. Nonetheless, the two series do share a common preoccupation with critiquing certain excesses of late capitalism. In its blend of dystopian and utopian elements and allusions to and subversions of Anglophone science-fiction conventions, Osmosis constitutes an original - and unashamedly French - futuristic series whose key characteristic is ambivalence.