It is not surprising, given how home-bound we now are, that we are watching more TV; nor is it surprising that on-demand streaming services are still doing well. What has changed, however, is how and what else we are watching: a lot of news, and much more so-called “linear TV”, at or near the time of broadcast. Group-watching used to apply mostly to sport fixtures and season finales. Now it happens across programming, from The Great British Bake Off, to All Creatures Great and Small, to Gardeners’ World, which has seen its best figures in a decade.
Perhaps that is not surprising either. Linear TV, and especially format TV with its reassuringly exact timing and predictable narratives, can give both variation and structure to days both monotonously similar and uncertain. It gives isolated people a collective experience to discuss things beyond an invisible threat in the very air. If the term “water-cooler TV” now sounds hopelessly old-fashioned – not least because the offices in which those water-coolers might have been situated feel like a thing of the past – the instinct remains, and the gatherings are now on Twitter, WhatsApp, Teleparty, or below the line in a liveblog, where the discussion can be intimate and insightful.
Before it was cancelled, Love Island famously provided the parents of teenagers, especially, a gateway into discussing the dos and don’ts of sexual relationships; shows such as Strictly Come Dancing and Bake Off are less lurid but attract more multi-generational sets of viewers, especially if, as now, they can’t escape each other. It is amazing how much can be got out of parsing the tension in someone’s fingertips or the grimace of partners whirling in dance. Strictly has such a hold on its audience that it seems that Downing Street had to back down after the BBC refused to delay the programme’s start for a prime ministerial briefing on coronavirus.
Some of the shows doing well are those that echo the activities lockdown has encouraged: baking, gardening, and watching TV (Channel 4’s Gogglebox is seeing its best numbers ever). This, too, is a kind of conversation: if you are a novice – or vicarious – tomato grower, there is a fascination in seeing them ripen, in parallel weather to that outside your window. This might not apply to ballroom dancing, but Strictly is seen as “live” entertainment, and the venues to which one would usually go for that sense of controlled jeopardy are hard to get to if not closed altogether. It’s striking that even Netflix is trialling a linear channel.
“Escapism” is a word often used pejoratively, but small doses are necessary; they make the larger bleakness easier to face. It is worth noting that a fifth of this country barely uses the internet. For them, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are essential companions. What we are seeing may be a redefinition of public service broadcasting – or, more likely, an apposite reminder of what it is for – which is not always to tell us to stay home and wash our hands.
