When I’m lying on the sofa gorging on whatever nugget of tellyland has taken my fancy that day I really do find it bloody knackering.
But before you get your patented ‘world’s smallest violin’ at the ready - let me just explain what my first world problem is that leaves me barely able to keep my eyes open as I strain myself reaching for the remote control. (As a side note to this I once broke two ribs reaching for the remote control. It was one of those futon sofas with metal bits keeping the sofa mattress in place. Stuff like this does happen.)
Anyway, my major malfunction with television is the sheer amount of episodes each season of an American TV show has.
It started with Buffy. I loved Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But even I found it tiring to sit through 23 episodes per season.
That’s about 13 episodes too many. It just doesn’t need that many. It really doesn’t. It means shows like Buffy, which had fantastic season arcs still had to have the filler ‘monster of the week’ episodes to fill the creative gaps each year.
It’s my major problem with The Flash at the moment. I love The Flash. It’s witty but technicolour if pretty unbelievable pulp TV for the most part.
But because of the US insistence on the 23 episode rule it consistently descends into the supervillain of the week drudgery - where a plot point moving the major arc forward is dripfed piecemeal.
It just means even the best series have to meander to survive. They have to have so much pointless filler.
But what makes it exhausting is just trying to keep with this sheer volume of episodes. There’s simply not enough time in the day.
Sky Plus has made it easier enabling you to save them all up a bit and then binge watch them. But it’s hard to binge watch a 23 episode run and keep your concentration as the filler involved means you end up looking at your phone half the time wondering when they’re going to finally move the main plot forward.
Granted it’s easier with sitcoms with their shorter running times but it’s still too many. Fawlty Towers only needed six episodes and that’s a classic. Talking about Fawlty Towers, I actually like the British system of doing much more where you have six episodes and that’s your lot.
Us Brits have managed quite well on this for years and even with the shorter seasons the storytelling seems to have more breathing room and space in between the action scenes to keep us entertained. In contrast over the pond every episode of The Flash seems so frenetic and fast-paced that it’s hard to keep up as they chuck more and more pseudoscience at you.
It’s not all American productions granted with Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead actually tailoring the length of their seasons for the amount of story they have to tell which is a lot more sensible way round of doing things.
I know this isn’t the biggest deal in the world but with so many quality shows nowadays it would make much more sense to have shorter runs.