Friends in Herefordshire said they were both fit and well but confessed to ‘watching far too much television’. I thought nothing of it until a Wiltshire couple whom my wife and I have known for ever said almost the same thing but with more foreboding. ‘We’ve got to break the habit of watching so much — even the good stuff.’
That’s the problem. There’s just too much good stuff on telly. It’s starting to become an issue, a tyranny of sorts, and certainly a drain on what Americans like to call ‘downtime’.
Gone are the days when TV was mainly rubbish and you could just get on with life — when Dixon of Dock Green and Z Cars were all we had by way of police dramas, before the relentless onslaught of Scandi crime thrillers that have done wonders for Nordic interior design. Nowadays we’re so spoilt for choice that the only solution is to surrender to ‘catch-up’ night after night. And playing catch-up is never much fun.
In our household, we’re currently playing catch-up with Cold Feet (sentimental but highly seductive), Fleabag (brilliant, her lipstick is fabulous) and Victoria (horribly silly with ridiculous, melodramatic music). Thankfully, we’re about to give up the chase with Victoria, not least because a new series of The Crown will soon be upon us and we don’t want to get our prime ministers muddled.
More to the point, if you’re not watching The Crown or, right now, Line of Duty, it’s easy to feel you’re no longer — to coin that infuriating phrase — ‘part of the conversation’. At least the final series of Game of Thrones begins this week, so we can finally stop talking about that.
You can’t win, even if you try to keep up with the shows as they are broadcast.
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