Remember when there was nothing to watch? …No, actually, we can’t. Modern TV is better than ever. But too much choice has created its own set of problems…

Words: Benji Wilson

There is nothing quite like triumphantly finishing the end of a great TV series and then racing into the office the next day to discuss and dissect, desperate to share opinions with our colleagues about the show that swept us away. It’s a buzz that arguably multiplies and intensifies the thrill of actually watching it in the first place. But it’s one that, increasingly, is becoming elusive to chase down; the bubble of our enthusiasm well and truly popped by the fact no-one else is ever on the same page at the same time.

You want to talk about The Night Manager (yes, yes, you’re late to the party), but everyone else is enthusing about Elle from Stranger Things and you have no idea what the hell they are talking about. As the conversation turns to the amusing candour of Fleabag, you back away with glassy, uncomprehending eyes, hoping you won’t be rumbled as the social pariah you have suddenly become.

Once upon a time in the quaint old days of four, and then five, channels we used to instinctively know which TV show would ensure social currency. It was a simple time when the National Grid regularly experienced a 800MW power surge after a dramatic episode of Coronation Street, the equivalent to 300,000 kettles simultaneously being switched on for a restorative cup of tea. We could rely on a lively debate the following day. Now we are overwhelmed with choice and cannot keep up. Thanks to iPlayer and Netflix (who introduced video streaming in 2007, with Amazon Video following suit in 2011), and hundreds of channels popping up on Sky, Virgin Media, BT, Freeview, Now TV and YouView, everything is available simultaneously somewhere. We can watch anything anywhere at any time; on tablets in bed or smartphones as we commute.

While the quantity is mindboggling, it’s the quality that presents the true dilemma: how is there time to watch everything? High-quality TV drama has gone from one or two treats amid endless repeats to something close to a happy chore. Indeed over the last five to 10 years, TV has arguably surpassed Hollywood for memorable moments. Whether you were swept away by Don Draper on a cliff top meditating his way to the perfect Coke ad in Mad Men, or the bone-tingling suspense of working out who killed Danny Latimer in Broadchurch; whether it was Aidan Turner’s chest in Poldark, the 15-month wait to discover how Sherlock fell off a hospital roof and lived, the death of Derek Shepherd in Grey’s Anatomy (sorry! Spoiler!) or the death of practically everyone in Game Of Thrones – TV has become the format for artistic excellence. Now we don’t just have lots of television, but lots of great television.

Just take the next few months. The BBC has One Of Us, a taut new thriller from the writers of The Missing, as well as an imagined history of a Nazi London called SS-GB and Tom Hardy in Taboo. ITV counter with Victoria, starring Jenna Coleman as the young Queen, Netflix will show The Crown, a £100million epic about Queen Elizabeth II in her early years; and Amazon debut The Collection, another lavish spread about a Dior-esque fashion house in post-war Paris. Sky is the main portal for the best American drama with HBO’s Westworld, the brilliant Criminal Justice remake The Night Of and Jude Law in The Young Pope. And that’s not to mention new series of The Fall, The Missing, Fortitude, House Of Cards, Orange Is The New Black, Catastrophe, Sherlock and Doctor Foster. In theory, these riches should create copious watercooler moments. But as Albert Einstein famously said, “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”

While we can no longer complain that “there’s nothing on TV”, having an abundance of choice is not as freeing as we’d hoped. The psychologist Barry Schwartz best elucidated the idea that too many options can be a bad thing. His book The Paradox Of Choice: Why More Is Less will be a life raft for those of us drowning in must-watch shows, tempted to sack off the lot of them and eat a KitKat in nun-like silence instead. A study from Columbia University, US, found that having too many options made us less likely to be happy with our choice, if we made a decision at all. Rather than making us feel empowered, Schwartz says a profusion of choice can be so overwhelming it actually increases anxiety. “Unlimited choice,” Schwartz explains, can “produce genuine suffering”.

Whether the agonising decision to go for Billions or the fourth season of Banshee (what – you didn’t see Banshee?) will produce genuine suffering in the average person is probably dependent on how seriously you take TV. But there’s no doubt that right now there’s more choice than ever, and that the advent of social media means you’re more aware of that choice too (through people tweeting stuff like “What – you didn’t see Banshee?”). Keeping up with the best TV – and the social conversation that surrounds it – has never been more frenetic, or felt more impossible.

Watercooler TV

Why do we even care? After all, agonising over what to watch surely has to be followed by #firstworldproblems. Yet, there’s something exciting and joyful about joining a conversation about something you’ve seen on TV – it instantly forms what David Edmonds, author of Big Ideas In Social Science, calls a “we identity”, an uplifting feeling of being understood.

Remember when there was nothing to watch? The very first-world problem of too much great TV