It was the best of years, it was the … no, wait, it was just the best of years: 2017 for television was like 1867 in Russian literature: alive with creativity, unexpectedness and creative works of incredible length. In the olden days, we would periodically ask why only Americans could make good TV (because they have bigger writing teams), and then the pendulum would swing and we’d ask why only the British could (because we have a tradition of public service broadcasting, and also a better sense of humour), and those conversations have vanished, because everybody is so brilliant at it that the idea of trying to locate the vibe ethnographically has become preposterous. There’s been a reversal over time of the old norm, that films were for grownups because they had more money, and TV was for kids who couldn’t go out. Now, films are for kids trying to escape their parents, and are largely nonsense, and TV is for adults who are too tired to leave their sofas, but apparently not so tired that they can’t watch 50 hours straight of intricate character analysis in a foreign language.
Broadly, it’s not so much facts we’ve learned – I don’t have brilliant recall for things I absorb outside office hours; I’m sure you’re the same – as how much we’ve developed as people. I’ve never thought so hard about the effects of plastic on the oceans, or totalitarianism on the self (Blue Planet II, SS-GB, The Handmaid’s Tale, Babylon Berlin – you people knew what you were doing); never been so ashamed of the quick growing up millennials had to do after Generation X gentrified, yet also ruined, everything. And there’s one thing we didn’t need political upheaval to teach us: all the old rules are broken. There is no such thing as too long, only not long enough; there is no such thing as too complicated, too dark, insufficiently uplifting or too hard. Whatever the impossible stew of malice and detail, harsh reality and extravagant fantasy, we’re good for it.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
