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The afterlife of your choosing is just a click away. In Upload (watch trailer, runtime2:13) people near death can choose to transfer their consciousness into a digital afterlife.

When Nathan Brown, a computer programmer, suffers an automated car accident, he is uploaded to Lakeview, a paradisal second life not for the pure of heart but the big of bank account.

The deceased can still call and talk to their living friends and family, but are stuck in a digital world created and managed by a megacorporation. You can fulfill your every desire in the afterlife… if you can pay for it.

Take Black Mirror and make it funny. Upload is a thinly veiled satire of cruel capitalistic ethics — even death favors the rich. Its bright palette and running jokes (brought to you by Greg Daniels of The Office and Parks and Recreation fame) are just window dressings for the core of the show.

Its realism is what makes it bleak, but also what makes it funny. The idea of a megacorporation like Amazon or Meta offering afterlife VR services isn’t enough of a stretch that we can laugh about it comfortably.

At one point, Nathan visits citizens of Lakeview that only have enough for two monthly gigabytes of data on the server, and have to live with data caps. In-app purchases plaguing us even in the afterlife simply isn’t funny when it isn’t too far off, especially when the show is set only ten years in the future.

Unexpectedly, the show meanders down a mystery plot when Nathan realizes his memories are glitchy. Turns out his work proposed a concept that threatened this megacorp’s afterlife program, so his accidental car accident may have not been an accident at all.

WHERE TO WATCH- You can find Upload on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime.

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