Like most people, myself and Herself have our television-watching ritual. After Daughter Number Four’s bedtime procedure – warm milk, teeth-brushing, book-reading (with me), cuddles (with Herself) – we retire to our own room and switch on the TV. Invariably, Daughter Number Four appears a few times to ask a crucial question or share some important information, but eventually leaves us in peace.
Yet even when the child is finally asleep, there can be a faint blush of anxiety connected to our viewing, because we don’t always know what to watch. It’s increasingly the case that we finish a series and then find ourselves a little adrift: there’s no obvious show to move on to next. We’ve exhausted our phase of subtitled moody European crime procedurals. Sometimes, I draw up lists of shows and we watch the first episode of each, to see if anything takes. We look in on the shows-everyone-is-talking-about, or that are favourably reviewed. Sometimes we like them; often we don’t like them enough to keep watching.
And it’s not that what we are watching is bad; it’s more that a lot of what’s on at the moment seems to be just okay. A bit “meh”. You enjoy it, then almost instantly forget about it. I could cite examples, but I don’t want to get sucked into some online row about something you love but I’m indifferent to. But what I will mention is Succession, which finished its final series earlier this year. It had nastiness and pathos and humour and Shakespearean scope, and was the last television drama I can think of when every episode or new series was an event.
If that feeling is familiar to you, it’s not a coincidence. Back in the day, HBO pioneered what came to be referred to as Prestige TV: the likes of The Sopranos and The Wire. When streaming arrived, the assumption was that we viewers would be mad keen for more, and the relatively small number of streamers threw money at programme creators. Back then, any kind of bonkers idea could get the nod – and it did produce some fantastic scripted television.
‘I never know when the Dart will arrive. And Irish Rail doesn’t seem to know either’
‘When the cinema lights came up, we all hugged, and I wondered why, on this day, the magic worked for me too’
I hate running. I tried it and it didn’t do me any good. I can’t be alone feeling like this?
If we don’t expect an improved Government, we won’t get one
But – rather like the Roy family in Succession – broadcasters and producers were flailing around, desperate to remain relevant. So, they set up their own streaming services. The market became fractured. A few years back, you’d never manage to get through all the quality programming on Netflix. But now a lot of it has migrated on to other services, leaving everyone with a smaller piece of the pie. When myself and Herself turn on the television, we’re not just wondering what to watch, we’re also wondering which subscriptions to get rid of. There are too many of them, and too many offering a lot of dross.
This doesn’t mean that television will be universally bad from now on. Some mid-budget limited-run shows will be excellent
So, because the competition is fierce and budgets are shrinking, expensive, Prestige TV has got it in the neck. The consensus seems to be that the era of tentpole television – the stuff you talk about at work the following day – is over.
This doesn’t mean that television will be universally bad from now on. Some mid-budget limited-run shows will be excellent. There have been plenty of examples of that this year. But an increasing amount of it will be dreadful – stuff you’ve seen before, shows with the word “housewife” in the title, shows where people in bathing suits get off with each other.
Daughter Number Four, our avatar of modernity, loves Is It Cake? on Netflix. Hosted by Mikey Day, a man in a state of near-explosive hyperactivity, it features contestants who get teary-eyed about their desire to bake cakes that look like underpants or computers. If I sold my 10-year-old car, I could probably fund the next five seasons.
It’s harmless stuff. Netflix may survive our streaming cull because of it. But a reckoning is coming. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, there’s 57 channels and nothing on.