Rewatching The Sopranos was fun for a year, sure. But, as a successful-if-boring series of Love Island proved, normal TV is back again – and with it the compulsive urge to watch it. This year has taught me that there is a near-limitless stock of prestige TV I haven’t got round to yet (I am only three series into Mad Men. Mad Men!), but the allure still clings to the rhythmic, the medicinal, the brain-off glossy stuff that wastes an hour of your life without making you think.
After weeks of watching Love Island, half against my will, E4 has this week had the temerity to put out a different daily reality bingefest, Married at First Sight UK. I already know I am going to watch every episode of that at 9pm instead of seeing what nice suit Don Draper is wearing during his semi-silent personal crisis. I simply cannot be bothered to watch good TV any more.
I know scientists have enough to do, but it would be good if one or two of them could look into this: have my synapses been so overloaded by perfect, Emmy-winning hours of premium TV that the only thing my gooey brain can handle is a woman with fillers yelling at a man in white trousers?
Is there a sociological reason that I have watched two series of Below Deck in two days? Is my nervous system overwhelmed by “seeing friends and not standing really far away from them” and “not quite knowing whether or not I should wear a mask on a train” to deal with important storylines about the slow inevitability of fatherly loss?
Please, science, I need an answer. I still haven’t watched The Wire and I want to know if my brain will survive five seasons of it.
• Joel Golby is a writer for the Guardian and Vice and the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant. Adrian Chiles is away
