The hottest show in America right now isn’t dark, dangerous or depressing. There are no violent deaths, no conflicted anti-heroes, no cynical men and women struggling to survive in a morally compromised world.
Instead This Is Us, which comes to Channel 4 later this year, follows a disparate group of people as they look for work, battle body issues, prepare to give birth and search for life’s meaning. Despite some sad moments, it’s television that’s as warm and welcoming as a hot bath at the end of a cold day, and it’s not the only show set to be embraced by eager audiences as the bad news keeps coming and the long nights draw in.
Ava DuVernay’s family saga Queen Sugar, which follows a trio of estranged siblings as they slowly come back together, has also built up a dedicated following of passionate fans since it began this autumn. Comedies from Insecure to The Good Place offer sunny takes on how to navigate life positively, with the former always willing to crack a joke at just the right moment and the latter offering a cheerful look at the importance of helping others.
And at the end of this month, the cult show Gilmore Girls will return to Netflix almost 10 years after it finished a seven-season run. The drama, about a close-knit mother and daughter living and loving in the eccentric New England town of Stars Hollow, is comfort television at its finest, the small-screen equivalent of sitting under a warm blanket wearing cashmere bed socks and holding a marshmallow-encrusted hot chocolate.
Then there’s The Crown. Yes, Netflix’s latest prestige drama is an in-depth exploration of Shakespeare’s notion that “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” but it is also an endless parade of posh frocks and pretty people drifting across expensive sets and agonising over their immense privilege. It’s the sort of show that you start watching with half an eye before getting slowly sucked in and accidentally bingeing your way through three episodes. The very definition of easy-watching, comfort television.
“What’s important about these shows is not that nothing bad ever happens; it’s that they say bad things happen but it will still be OK,” says Todd VanDerWerff, culture editor at Vox.com. “Comfort television holds the promise that at the end of the scene or the hour or the season, these people will be fundamentally fine and that resonates more than ever right now. We’re not in the mood for dramas filled with existential dread; instead people are responding to shows that say, ‘yes, someone you love may die tomorrow but we’ll get through this together and it’ll be OK’.”
That desire to see chinks of light amid the darkness only intensified during a gruelling US election campaign that culminated in the shock victory for Donald Trump, according to Daniel Fienberg, television critic at the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s interesting because This Is Us isn’t escapism – it’s often raw and the things that happen on it often hurt, but they do so in ways that feel manageable and relatable, whereas so much that’s in the news is so difficult to fathom,” he says. “We live in a time where it’s easier to explain to your kids, ‘well, this is my birth father and he has cancer and he’s dying’, than to justify the rhetoric of a political debate or explain the logistics of a complicated election.”
At its most basic, comfort television also does exactly what it says on the tin. “On Wednesday, after the tragedy of the US election result I went home, wrapped myself up in a blanket and watched three episodes of Gilmore Girls,” says Caroline Crampton, assistant editor at the New Statesman who hosts the magazine’s pop culture podcast, Srsly, with writer Anna Leszkiewicz. Both women are huge fans of Gilmore Girls – in addition to organising a quiz about the show, which will take place on 22 November, they are dedicating this week’s edition of Srsly to it. “Gilmore Girls’ appeal really lies in its familiarity,” says Leszkiewicz. “There are loads of really good in-jokes and the writing is so strong that long-time viewers know all the characters’ quirks and how they will respond. In the same way that Harry Potter fans basically feel as though we all went to Hogwarts, so Gilmore Girls fans feel like we’re actually members of the Stars Hollow community.”
Kat Brown, the social media editor for Glamour magazine and another committed Gilmore Girls fan, agrees. “It probably sounds a bit twee but this has been a bastard of a year and a show like Gilmore Girls allows you to be transported for a time to a different place,” she says. “It’s a world filled with humour and warmth and wit where nothing really terrible is going to happen, and I think at this time of year in particular we all want to bed down a bit because every day is getting more exhausting.” It helps too, Brown adds, that the original series, which aired between 2000 and 2007, was set in a pre-social media age. “It probably seems strange me saying this, given my job, but one of the most fun things about Gilmore Girls is that it’s a show based entirely on pop culture in which there’s no Twitter, no second screening, no Instagram, no Snapchat. Any trolling is done to the person’s face and there’s something very comforting about that.”
She’s right that there’s a heavy nostalgia element driving the rise of comfort television. Amiable sci-fi show Stranger Things became a huge hit earlier this year by tapping into a generation’s memories of 80s pop culture. Gilmore Girls is loaded with generation-spanning pop culture references, even using a song by that queen of folk nostalgia, Carole King, as its theme. This Is Us both nods back to the family dramas of the past (Thirtysomething, Six Feet Under, Brothers and Sisters, Parenthood) and gives them a 21st-century spin.
“This Is Us has been savvily aware of a real gap in the marketplace,” says Fienberg. “Family comedies aren’t in short supply – ABC has five or six really good ones – but straightforward family dramas are hard to come by. This Is Us isn’t a family soap opera or procedural masking a family drama. It’s about getting very big emotions from relatively small and normal life events.”
VanDerWerff agrees, adding that comfort television shows are likely to become increasingly prevalent in the schedules. “If you look at The Good Place, it’s both a great comedy and a show about problem solving, working together and becoming a better person and I think that resonates right now,” he says. “There’s a real renaissance in comedy which is probably due to a general feeling of stress and, while I’d hesitate to make a strong correlation between a feeling that when the economy is down people want to lose themselves in escapism, I also do think that there’s a definite move towards this kind of show. HBO is developing a lot of family dramas – not all of them will be comforting, of course – but I think there’s a sense that when people feel anxious they turn to this kind of show to escape.”
Yet it is also the case that one person’s comfort is another’s source of despair. Comfort television is often conservative television and for every adoring review of This Is Us there has been one condemning the show as manipulative. For every Gilmore Girls addict there is someone who loathes the show’s whimsical nature. “One viewer’s cathartic tearjerker is another viewer’s mawkish schlock,” admits Fienberg. “But being able to laugh and cry and vicariously hug in only 42 minutes is very satisfying and very universal.”
Jay Hunt, Channel 4’s chief creative officer, says that this is exactly why they bought the show, their first major US import since Homeland back in 2011. “This Is Us has real heart and the sort of warmth audiences are crying out for at the moment,” she says. “As the world grows more and more complex, there’s a natural draw to the sort of warm-bath drama that celebrates human kindness.”
The strength of that appeal should not be underestimated as America begins to tend to its collective wounds. “There’s definitely a nostalgia element here,” says VanDerWerff. “A lot of people here are about to face very difficult Thanksgivings where we’re going to have to talk to close relatives who we know voted the opposite way to us and we genuinely don’t know what to say. Shows like This Is Us or Gilmore Girls capture a world where families really love and support each other. Their fundamental message is that, despite everything, we’re going to be OK.”
This Is Us comes to C4 later this year. Gilmore Girls arrives on Netflix on 25 November.
COMFORT CLASSICS
The Rockford Files (1974-80)
No cop show did it better than this drama with Jim Garner as the laconic private eye.
Anne of Green Gables (1985)
Netflix might be preparing to bring everyone’s favourite red-headed orphan to a new generation, but they do so at their peril.
Thirtysomething (1987-91)
Yes, they were all incredibly annoying and self-absorbed, but there’s something wonderfully nostalgic about it.
Friends (1994-2004)
They’ll still be there for you, after all these years. The sitcom remains a classic example of cross-generation comfort TV.
Friday Night Lights (2006-11)
No one did family life better than Eric and Tami Taylor in this heart-warming series about a small-town Texas football team.
Parks and Recreation (2009-15)
Got the post-election blues? Let Leslie Knope and her merry band lead you to a kinder, more optimistic America.
