Opinion Piece - I Think I've Given Up on TV

I have a horrible feeling I'm going to piss people off with this blog post, but at least let me explain myself first. For years and years, I have been talking about how we're living in a golden age of TV, a glorious age where there's loads of TV and basically all of it is great. Just in this decade, we've had the debuts of shows like Bojack Horseman, Fargo and Black Mirror, era defining works whose ongoing seasons I remain enraptured by. All of this, in my eyes (and as it always seems to), culminates in Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017. Gone was the non-stop binge marathon that most TV has turned into, instead we got a glacially paced 18 weeks, in which frustration gave way to sheer cinematic joy which in turn became another cliffhanger for the ages, one which we will likely never get an answer for. I've spoken at length about that show many, many times but in the way it revolutionised long form story telling, criticised our hunger for satisfying content and was also just bloody excellent, I claimed that it ruined all TV that came after. Two years on from The Return (and one year on from that statement), I think I still stand by it, although it isn't the only reason that TV has become a form that I struggle to return to now.

I don't really think it's a coincidence that my three favourite shows that I've seen this year [...] have all been eight episodes or less, clocking in at about half an hour an episode.

One of the reasons is obvious and I'm sure felt by everyone; there is simply not enough time to watch all the great TV that we "should" be watching. Even as a student, a demographic with abundance of free time, when I reach the end of the day I'm far more likely to put on a film or two than start finally sinking into Peaky Blinders or The Crown. I don't really think it's a coincidence that my three favourite shows that I've seen this year (those being This Time with Alan Partridge, Fleabag Season 2 and Bojack Horseman Season 6) have all been eight episodes or less, clocking in at about half an hour an episode. It's why I do not mourn for something like House of Cards ending, as every year I would give over an entire day to 13 hour slogs of seasons. Equally, it's why I have a rapturous response to a show like Maniac from last year. If you didn't see it (and I assume you probably didn't, it wasn't exactly a hit) it was a limited series starring Emma Stone, Jonah Hill and Justin Theroux that was ten episodes long. That was it. Ten episodes, nothing more, promise. Even better, it utilised the streaming format to the max and had massively varied episode lengths, ranging from an hour to 25 minutes. Watching it felt like a treat, made all the sweeter by the brevity. Adding even more to all the feeling of being overwhelmed though is the fact that there is simply too much great TV now. I feel like every single person reading this has, at some point in the last year, had a show recommended to them, said "Oh cool, that sounds great, I'll check that out!" and is still yet to check that out.

Expanding on that though, I feel like the complete streaming war zone we now find ourselves living in has made it even harder to care properly about TV. With the rise of Netflix came a horde of other content producers (be they Amazon, HBO, Starz or countless other platforms) all rising up with their own platforms. How do you sell a platform to an audience who are already inundated with streaming platforms? As video game console makers will tell you, you need those killer exclusives. Netflix started this with House of Cards, Amazon have tried to emulate it with things like The Marvellous Mrs Maisel and even platforms like Hulu have been cranking out critically acclaimed gems like The Handmaids Tale. What it leads to however is a serious cultural fragmentation. Even if I am in the mood for TV, I have to work out which streaming platform it's on. Some of the big ones I already have access to (either through my parents accounts or my stuff I actually pay for) but many of them I don't. Euphoria, Succession and Chernobyl are all shows I would love to watch but I don't have access to HBO (and being out of the UK right now, Now TV is also not an option). With a film, it is either out in cinemas for you to enjoy or there are many other ways to consume it. I'm such a big advocate of physical media for exactly this reason, because if I ever have a desire to watch Paddington 2 (and I often do, it's delightful), I can pull out my blu-ray of it.  Netflix and Amazon make their own films as adverts for their platforms but even then, they can often get physical releases too, like Suspiria (2018) and Roma. I know this is a symptom of our modern laziness, as the only way to binge TV used to be to buy a boxset but with streaming media here, no one is going to drop £50 on a TV series unless they already love it. What these things all boil down to is that it is hard to get those "water cooler" moments anymore from TV. With a film, maybe we did both see Joker because it was in cinemas and available so widely. With TV though, maybe you watched season 2 of Barry over the weekend, but we can't talk about it together because I don't have HBO and I was just watching The Office U.S. instead.

Film is so delicious and consumable that it marks a difficult proposal to beat.

As I always hope with posts like this, this wasn't meant to come across as rambling. TV still has heaps to offer in terms of content and I love discovering new shows and spending hours with them, but it gets exhausting. Film is so delicious and consumable that it marks a difficult proposal to beat for me. Sure, something you love may last only two hours but wouldn't you much rather have Booksmart be a delightful 100 minutes that you can rewatch over and over than have House of Cards sour slowly and excessively over six seasons? It doesn't apply to everything in life (so I'm told) but shorter can be so much sweeter sometimes.