At its best, TV is a social experience. It’s turning up to work on a Monday and immediately discussing last night’s episode of Game of Thrones , Breaking Bad or Succession. The weekly format of those water-cooler classics meant we had more time to digest each episode, discuss plot developments, and speculate about future storylines.
The advent of streaming – and Netflix’s model in particular – did its best to kill that, with the shift to the binge model that saw all episodes of a show released at once. Unless it’s a breakout hit, like Baby Reindeer , a new show on a streaming platform has a huge challenge in finding – and holding on to – an audience. In large part, that’s because a show’s entire life cycle from premiere to post-mortem happens within a week.
They get a fortnight if they’re lucky. Has binge-watching killed the art of TV? Credit: Getty But even big breakouts like Baby Reindeer don’t elicit the same conversational joy as shows of yore because everyone’s experiencing them at a different pace. You may have spent all weekend devouring that particular buffet of social awkwardness, and the next day, you might have eagerly asked a friend or colleague if they’d also seen it.
They’re only on episode two, they say, so we’ll wait to debrief until they’re caught up. What follows is ..
. nothing. You never discuss the show again.
The episodic release model isn’t perfect, of course. Apple TV+ and Disney+ both use the week-to-week release str.