It’s Wednesday, which means my evening is booked up for Slow Horses. The usual protracted regime of children’s tea-bath-bed will be compressed into about 10 minutes (packet of crisps, cursory going-over with a wet wipe, withholding of bedtime story on thoroughly spurious grounds) before my husband and I leap onto the sofa like The Simpsons in the opening credits with a bottle of Malbec and a Charlie Bigham’s curry to watch the new episode on Apple TV+. (Gen Z readers: at the risk of lowering the birth rate even further, this is what fun looks like in your forties after three kids.)
Weekly episodes now seem quaint, as archaic as a landline or a daily newspaper landing on the doormat
Being late to the party, I binge-watched the first three series of Slow Horses, the darkly hilarious – and multi-Emmy Award-nominated – spy thriller. So when the fourth series, ‘Spook Street’, premiered on 4 September and the first episode didn’t immediately roll onto the next, I was outraged. I felt cheated. I may even have kicked the ottoman footstool. Surely it’s our God-given right to gorge ourselves on six episodes in one session? What’s the point of a streaming service if not to supply us with the instant gratification that we’ve come to expect?
We’ve become so accustomed to the Netflix model of dropping an entire season in one go (Squid Game, Stranger Things) or in sizeable chunks (The Crown) to generate a buzz and excitement about the show, that weekly episodes now seem quaint, as archaic as a landline or a daily newspaper landing on the doormat. Since Netflix released its first big production, House of Cards, in one go in 2013, it has become the industry norm. (By contrast, the original BBC series had viewers gripped by the machinations of Francis Urquhart, played by Ian Richardson, over four weeks in 1990.)
And yet, over the past month, Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and his band of MI5 rejects have helped me rediscover the rhythms and pleasures of a weekly television event, a must-see, that builds suspense and tension. I’ve been freelance for a decade so have no idea if water coolers, or indeed their ‘moments’, went with Covid. My equivalent is the constant badgering of my husband (who’s read the Mick Herron books on which the series is based) with endless questions, or messaging similarly fixated girlfriends back and forth on WhatsApp. These conversations broadly fall into two camps: Diana Taverner’s (Kristin Scott Thomas) wardrobe – ‘Where do you think that coat’s from?’ ‘Dunno. Max Mara maybe? Joseph?’ – and whether Jackson Lamb, despite the dubious personal hygiene and flatulence, is actually quite hot.
Do you remember when over 20 million people tuned in to find out who shot JR in Dallas in 1980? No, me neither – but I do recall vividly the wonder and excitement with which I sat down for each of the six episodes of The Box of Delights on Children’s BBC a few years later, ending (I think) on Christmas Eve 1984. I now watch the DVD with my children during Advent, insisting on one episode at a time. They looked at me with slack-jawed horror when I first announced this. Now, it’s a part of Christmas they look forward to, savouring and digesting each episode like a foil-wrapped Lindor chocolate.
From obsessing over who killed Laura Palmer (Twin Peaks) to whether Ross and Rachel (Friends) or Carrie and Mr Big would ever get together (Sex and the City), the weekly series was a mainstay of some of my most formative years. But streaming schedulers aren’t motivated by nostalgia so much as a desire to keep people watching for a longer period of time – Game of Thrones and, to a lesser degree, Succession, kept subscribers at HBO for many years.
Binge-watchers are more likely to experience euphoric highs, but there’s the inevitable comedown after hours spent wasting away in front of the screen. After Baby Reindeer, I felt as disturbed and dirty as I did after reading Chips Channon’s unexpurgated diaries – and in need of a good scrub in the shower. Bingeing on Bridgerton felt like scoffing a surfeit of pastel-coloured, cloyingly sweet macarons – requiring the associated purge. You’re left lying on the sofa feeling morbidly sluggish and lugubrious, but in no way satiated. I’d grown weary of full releases some time ago, but Slow Horses brought it home to me. I’ve since come to cherish my Wednesday evenings, the WhatsApps and the weeks of tension. See you by the water cooler…
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