Back to old school tv the comfort in community viewership

Back to old school tv the comfort in community viewership

Binge watching got everyone through the pandemic. Now, the old-fashioned habit of appointment watching is back. Simultaneously sharing the experience of watching shows with the rest of the world, is irreplaceable.

Back in 2013, when Netflix released all 13 episodes of the first season of House of Cards in one go, there was little indication of how much it would transform the way people consumed screen content. Binge-watching, so far confined to those who would download pirated versions of popular television content, emerged as a socially-acceptable way of watching shows, going fully mainstream with the start of the pandemic in 2020, when ongoing TV shows were forced to go on hiatus and viewers turned to OTT streaming services for comfort.

Two years later, appointment watching is back, with recent major releases, including House of the Dragon, The Boys and The Rings of Power, dropping an episode a week. If binge watching was a useful distraction during the dark, structureless days of the pandemic, as lives once more get back on course, a return to the old habit of appointment watching seems only natural. Even Netflix, a pioneer in the binge-watch format, has realised the value of not releasing entire seasons of its most anticipated shows in one go: Season 4 of Stranger Things, for instance, was split over two volumes this year.

Binge watching is, no doubt, here to stay, but the experience of being immersed in the lives of fictional characters, week after week, and simultaneously sharing that experience with the rest of the world, is irreplaceable. There is comfort in knowing that when something shocking — Ned Stark’s beheading back in 2011 — or infuriating — the last scene of The Sopranos cutting to black — happens, you, the viewer, are not alone. Millions of others around the world feel just the way you do, at exactly the same time.