After a four-year wait, “Black Mirror,” maybe the smartest — and certainly the coolest — science fiction television series of all time, has returned for a sixth season on Netflix.

The anthology’s latest five episodes tackle topics ranging from its signature obsession, technology gone wild, to British politics, isolation and scorched-earth media satire. The latter, aimed particularly at Netflix, is merciless and hilarious.

In each case, series creator Charlie Brooker and an assortment of skilled directors foreground recognizable human behavior as situations grow increasingly bizarre. It’s the old “Black Mirror” trick, but delivered with a confident new patience. If anything unites these five stories of disparate genres and tones, it’s how we’re drawn into the humdrum basics of characters’ lives before watching their worlds drive them crazy.

How well does it all work? Season six certainly starts out with a bang, settles into an intriguing if somewhat middling stretch, then tries to end with an even bigger bang that doesn’t quite blow us away. Though each episode has a unique atmosphere and style, some of these perfectly crafted tales are reminiscent of stories we’ve been told elsewhere.

That’s a bit of an unfortunate “Black Mirror” first, although there is some pleasure to be had from watching familiar narratives unfold with the series’ distinctive blend of existential dread, cynical humor and moral ambiguity.

Brooker claims that the season’s first and most successful episode, “Joan Is Awful,” is “Black Mirror’s” first flat-out comedy. It does boast more one-liners and humiliating setups than any before, but this nightmare about unremarkable office manager Joan (Annie Murphy of “Schitt’s Creek” fame) discovering that everything she does is dramatized on Streamberry — the season’s Netflix clone — that evening bears the DNA of such classic episodes as “Nosedive” and “USS Callister.” Salma Hayek is a particular joy, pulling out all the stops as the nastier TV version of Joan, and the show’s deep-fake labyrinth is as brilliantly worked out as anySpider-Verse.

“Loch Henry” unfolds around a naturally gorgeous Scottish hamlet that’s been depressed since a psycho killer scared away the tourists. This one’s a riff on how earnest documentarians can be seduced by the true crime craze (hey, it’s what Streamberry is buying!), with devastatingly personal consequences. Old technology — VHS tapes in this case — plays a key part in this episode and sets up a motif that will course through the rest of the season.

The last three stories unfold in imaginary but familiar enough pasts. “Beyond the Sea” is set in an alternative 1969 for any number of cultural reasons. Josh Hartnett and Aaron Paul are astronauts two years into a six-year space mission. They’re able to transfer consciousness into exact cyborg replicas back on Earth, which is nice for both their psychological equilibrium and families — until it isn’t. This one has the season’s deepest, most aching feelings, but it takes a predictable turn and ultimately just laps at the shores of “San Junipero,” the series’ most emotionally gratifying entry.

“Mazey Day” is set in 2006, when paparazzi pursued celebrities in quest of the most embarrassing shots. Zazie Beetz plays a barely-making-it photographer who has ethical doubts about her profession but can’t resist the payday for tracking a suicide starlet into the wilderness beyond Los Angeles. This becomes the season’s most traditional entry, with excellent makeup effects.

The final episode, “Demon 79,” reveals its time frame not only in its title but with a very 1970s format of flat telephoto lensing and hit tunes of the time. Reactionary Margaret Thatcher is coming to power while British skinheads are running racist riot. A lonely young woman of Indian descent, Nida (Anjana Vasan), suffers numerous microaggressions at her department store job and beyond. When the other part of the title manifests as a Black Cockney funk singer (Paapa Essiedu of “I May Destroy You”), Nida finds motivation, perhaps even justification, for her darker impulses.

One consistency this season shares with the rest of “Black Mirror”: Human nature is fundamentally horrible, and it comes as a surprise when it’s not. Its strongest moments rise out of unexpected instances of decency, connection and happiness.

But the more organic way we get to know characters this time around has its own rewards as they make wrong, terrible choices. This most technophobic of series feels a little more human than ever before.

鲍勃Strauss is a freelance writer.