Does binge-watching box-sets make us miss the best TV?

The head of the BBC maintains we are missing out on quality TV because of box sets. Ed Power picks up his remote and checks out the winter schedules to see if he’s right

Sat, 21 Nov, 2015 - 00:00

Does television have an elitism problem?

That was the opinion of head of BBC TV Danny Cohen, who claimed the popularity of acclaimed “box set” dramas such as Mad Men, Game Of Thrones and True Detective is overstated, and that most viewers would rather curl up to something locally produced and less brain-bendingly esoteric.

“A trope has developed, a cultural meme that asserts that American drama is far superior to drama produced in the UK and at the BBC,” he said.

“It’s an argument driven by box-set consumers who have a louder voice in Britain’s cultural dialogue than the average family who sit down at night in Britain’s towns and villages to decide which drama they want to watch.”

Setting aside the specificity of his appeal to the good taste of British audiences, you can appreciate his logic.

Though critics love to swoon over the existential noir of True Detective and tumble at the feet of Game of Thrones (swords, sorcery, naked ladies), is it an overstatement to suggest these shows are popular in any conventional sense?

Consider that the finale of the latest season of Game of Thrones – HBO’s highest rating series ever – attracted some eight million viewers in the United States.

That sounds a lot, and yet is thoroughly dwarfed by the 15 million routinely tuning into the Big Bang Theory and the near 20 million who watch NCIS, the highest rated franchise in the United States across the past decade.

Why the disconnect between the television championed by taste-makers and the stuff people actually sit down and feast their eyeballs on?

After all, nothing like the same contradiction exists in cinema, where the media focus is on blockbusters such as Jurassic World and the Marvel movies.

Similarly in music, chart-toppers such as Taylor Swift and Rihanna commandeer the front pages – a far cry from the cold shoulder served up to NCIS and its ilk.

What makes television, arguably the medium most intertwined with our day to day lives, so different?

One theory is that TV is by its nature a diffuse format. Just because a show is statistically popular, doesn’t mean a significant number of viewers have been exposed to it.

If Taylor Swift tops the charts, she will be ubiquitous on radio. Jurassic World was accompanied by a deafening publicity campaign – toy dinosaurs, Indominus Rex- branded breakfast cereal, a game in the iTunes App store. It was earthshakingly inescapable.

Law and Order, by contrast, can attract millions of viewers without ever truly intruding on our collective conscience. It is invisible in plain view.

“In music, the most popular songs are inescapable, and their artists become national celebrities,” wrote The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson last year. “

In movies, the most popular films are feted in the Monday papers and widely acknowledged, even if they only compete for the special-effects awards in March.

But on television, the world of criticism and the world of viewership aren’t merely askew; they’re mostly on different planets.”

The howling gap between the shows the media lavishes love on and the stuff that triumphs in the ratings can verge on surreal.

Consider that the most tweeted about series of 2014, Girls, and the positively reviewed House of Cards between them on average notched up half the audience of an average showing of NCIS.

Absurdly, it is NCIS’s incredible popularity that apparently dooms it to a low profile.

Television, the most populist medium of all, is beset with snobbery.

A stand-out embodiment of this contradiction is Mad Men, which has proved supremely influential even as its ratings remain somewhere south of lamentable.

Leading man Jon Hamm has been on the cover of every men’s magazine in the universe while break-out female actress Christina Hendricks is a bona fide style icon.

More widely, Mad Men’s meticulous evocation of a button-down mid-60s chic has exerted a strong pull over fashion trends.

And yet, nobody really watched Mad Men across its seven-year run. In the UK, ratings for the series dipped as low as 47,000 – a statistical insignificance.

“I know our show is not for everyone,” Hamm said last year.

“It will never get the audience of ‘The Walking Dead’ because it just doesn’t appeal to that wide a swath of the viewing public. It’s not designed that way. It’s gotten to where it’s only the hardcore people are down with it. It makes sense. It’s a different viewing experience.”

What is telling is that low viewership did little to arrest the progress of Mad Men. The show served as a calling card for parent network AMC, evidence that it had joined the elite club of quality cable broadcasters.

One could almost regard Mad Men as a loss leader – it established AMC’s bone fides, then encouraged subscribers to stick around for more populist content – including, as Hamm noted, the runaway Walking Dead.

However, the other half of Cohen’s argument – that “box set” television is over-rated at a strictly artistic level – is harder to stand-up.

He might prefer to curl up to a Downton Abbey double bill rather than Mad Men.

Nonetheless, it is surely absurd to suggest the Julian Fellowe’s blithe country house drama deserves to stand alongside Matthew Weiner’s chronicling of unhappy ad executives in 60s New York.

The fact is that the very best television is tweeted, blogged about and gushed over for the reason that it truly is the best.

Nobody had much love for Game of Thrones when it debuted in 2011 – indeed, the consensus was that it was an expensive folly that would soon be eclipsed by HBO’s other big drama, Boardwalk Empire.

But Game of Thrones won us over despite a perceived widespread aversion to its fantastical setting and an early flood of hectoring reviews that refused to countenance that a show in a made-up universe could be worth anyone’s time.

It was only as the series piled memorable scene upon memorable scene and shocked audiences with genuinely unnerving twists that critics came around.

Out of the gate, Game of Thrones was no more beloved than Big Bang Theory.

Closer to home there is the example of Love/Hate, the nearest Irish TV has come to a ‘box set’ phenomenon.

Again, the odds were against the series, given the low regard in which Irish people tend to hold anything produced by RTÉ.

Yet, season by season, Love/Hate built a following and brought the media onside, with gritty dialogue, slick pacing and a storyline which held a mirror to contemporary Ireland.

It didn’t take the viewer’s hand in the fashion of Downton Abbey and people loved it nonetheless. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if we qualify something as ‘box set’ television or not – what wins out in the end is quality.

TV TO WATCH

1: Les Revenants, Season Two

A zombie show with a difference, in Les Revenants the undead return to a remote French-Alpine village unchanged since their death.

Season two picks up after the “returned” have taken over and the next stage of their presumably nefarious plan cranks into gear. Currently airing on More 4.

2: Jessica Jones

This second team-up between comic book power-house Marvel and the popular streaming service doubles down on the gritty tone of predecessor Daredevil.

Jones ( Krysten Ritter) is a super-hero turned private investigator – a woman haunted by demons in a universe where nice people finish last. November on Netflix.

3: Mr Robot

A sensation in the United States, in this part of the world conspiracy theory drama Mr Robot is available through Amazon’s subscription video service.

It’s worth seeking out – cinematic in scope, with a storyline that blends American Psycho, The Social Network and Fight Club, this tale of a hacker suffering an emotional meltdown is like nothing else on television. Season one available now on Amazon Prime.

4: The Last Panthers

A greatly hyped crime drama from Sky, starring John Hurt and Samantha Morton as the employees of an insurance company chasing a gang of jewellery thieves.

The theme song was written especially by David Bowie. Debuting on Sky Atlantic in November.

5: Sherlock Season Special