Is ‘good enough’ all we want from TV?

For those people with a therapeutic bent of mind, the phrase ‘good enough’ has an almost magical power. It says: don’t beat yourself up because your child isn’t a straight-A student, your marriage isn’t the best thing since Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, and your sobriety is patchy. Sure, you hit your kid – but you didn’t stab them. Sure, you hate your husband – but you haven’t plotted with a stranger to have him killed. Sure, you’re depressed – but you got up this morning and went to work like any other normie. All these instances of your fallibility are opportunities for growth. As they say in twelve-step programmes, it’s ‘progress not perfection’. 

‘Good enough’, though, as a mantra, isn’t what we look for in the arts. What we look for there is the flash of genius – the chance to see someone else performing in whatever medium in a way that causes us awe and excitement.