Binge watching TV will make time fly on a long flight

Forget movie magic, it’s a gripping show that will make the hours disappear when you're on in the air.

I must start by saying I have always been a relatively easy-to-please traveller. 

I love airline food and tiny containers of yoghurt and mini packets of nuts make my heart sing. I love little gins and small wine bottles. I love amenity kits. I adore travel-sized beauty products. I even really like eating overpriced airport food and drinking overpriced airport sparkling wine while waiting for a flight. It’s all part of the experience and I can’t get enough of it.

I also love in-flight entertainment and once upon a time would stop watching new movies in the weeks leading up to a flight so that I could enjoy them one after another on the plane. Long-haul flights? An excuse to watch all the movies, eat all the nuts and drink all the small gins. Bliss.

But times have changed, and these days I don’t watch in-flight movies at all. I don’t even bother to scroll through the selection – after all, with the streamers showing most movies before they’ve even left the cinema, I’m destined to be disappointed when the one new film I haven’t seen stars a bunch of nobodies and a lesser Baldwin. Nothing against the Baldwins, but you know what I mean.

Today, I’m all about the box sets. Hear me out.

You can smash through a box set of 13 half-hour eps in sixish hours and really feel like you’ve achieved something.

There will always be a TV series you have missed. I have every streaming service under the sun (and my accountant will tell you it’s not a good use of my money) and yet I still somehow haven’t seen season five of Breaking Bad or season three of Industry. A few hours in the air and you can knock those shows over before you can say “another tiny gin and tonic, thank you”.

If that mid-air malaise kicks in, getting to the end of a 30-minute episode sets you up perfectly for an uncomfortable attempt at sleeping without having to stop mid-movie and remember where you got up to when you wake up approximately 40 minutes later.

You can smash through a box set of 13 half-hour eps in sixish hours and really feel like you’ve achieved something. I watched three seasons of Mad Men on a recent trip back from the UK – I felt like I worked at Sterling Cooper by the time I landed home in Sydney. I was au fait with how to make a great Martini, plus I had a list of retro furniture I wanted to buy and a desperate desire to join a typing pool. I also kept telling my husband I had Peggy on the line for him, which understandably confused him.

I watched three seasons of Mad Men on a recent trip back from the UK.

Watching a box set can become a fun sport as you try to finish an entire series before dinner service or get to a season finale before the lights come up.

True, there can be a panic when you’re two eps away from the end and the captain suddenly tells the crew to prepare the cabin for landing, but that’s what fast-forward is for, quite frankly, and a seasoned pro will never let it happen twice.

Look, I get it. If you’ve been wanting to watch The Joker since it came out, and there it is on your entertainment system just as the crew serve you your chicken and black bean sauce, then by all means go for gold. But if you’re scrolling and no movies appeal, then just give one tiny box set a crack and see how good it feels. Polish off a series of Arrested Development, why don’t you? Or watch the three hour-long eps of A Very Royal Scandal. Finally get stuck into Game of Thrones – that’s a real hoot. Or come and join me in Don Draper’s world.I promise you’ll never look back. And those Martinis are to die for.

Originally published as Binge watching TV will make time fly on a long flight