We’ve never had so much choice on TV, but what do we have to savour?
With streaming services, we’ve never had so much choice on TV – but Kerry Parnell asks, what do we have to savour?
Opinion
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Can we please have some more quality TV?
As the last season of Succession nears its halfway point, it becomes even more apparent there is little to succeed it. Instead of wondering who will take over Waystar, it begs the question, what will take its place?
Streaming services continue to hurl billions of dollars at blockbuster remakes, such as Harry Potter, which is in the works from Max (the new brand name of HBO Max) and this week it was announced Twilight is being developed as a TV series by Lionsgate TV. They follow The Lord of the Rings from Amazon and Star Wars from Disney.
We’ve never had so much choice on TV, so why, then, are we still doom-scrolling through the endless – and annoyingly disorganised – contents of Amazon, Netflix, Disney and so on?
I want quality over quantity, I don’t want to bleep-bleep my way past a mix of Game of Thrones rip-offs, strangely-dubbed Scandinavian series and thinly-stretched documentaries.
Some of them are so poor you can see the soul dying in the actors’ eyes, as they try to forget their Oscar nominations, while valiantly waving a sword.
I get that franchises like Potter are great entertainment and assured money-makers. But can’t TV execs leave just a slither of budget for something new and unexpected? You never know, it might be the start of something.
It’s the same as the publishing industry chucking book deals at celebrity authors, rather than unknowns, because famous names are guaranteed to sell, even if they are mostly a load of old Walliams.
It makes it almost impossible for new voices, or an original genre of entertainment to emerge. Where are the cutting-edge comedies? The truly hot TV series we collectively can’t miss? We binge on new shows so fast, we’re devouring content and not savouring anything.
Succession is up there with The Sopranos, The Wire and Breaking Bad. But it’s hard to pick out diamonds amid so many cheap imitations.
Take Phoebe Waller-Bridge: in 2016 she burst on to our TV screens with the innovative and brilliant Fleabag, which was commissioned after execs saw her earlier stage show of the same name.
It shot to the top, but the minute she won her Emmys in 2019, she was snapped up by Amazon on a $30 million a year deal. Hooray, you think, until you realise it hasn’t resulted in any more innovative comedies on our screens. She had been signed to the Mr and Mrs Smith TV adaptation (yep …) but reportedly quit after “creative differences”. Now she’s adapting Tomb Raider for them as a TV series.
Don’t get me wrong, whatever Waller-Bridge does is bound to be worth the wait. She’s in Indiana Jones 5 and John Krasinski’s movie Imaginary Friends, plus reportedly, first choice to direct the next Bond movie. But I can’t help wishing she had also been free to create another Fleabag-style genre-breaker.
In the words of the priest, “Why believe in something awful when you can believe in something wonderful?”
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