To binge watch or not …….. random thoughts in the company of the Radio Times

 By binge watching I mean that self-indulgent act of sitting down with a boxed set of DVDs or calling up a streamed series on a TV platform.

It is of course a relatively new practice, because before streaming, DVD’s and that ancient technology, which was VHS, watching an episode of a drama, sit com or documentary was confined to once a week and then for only as long as the series lasted.

And if you missed it, you could only hope it was repeated later in the year or wait for someone at work or in the pub to tell you what happened.

The same was true of the wireless.

There is a lot of merit in rationing the programm to once a week. For starters it brings back memories of sitting in front of the radio listening to Hancock’s Half Hour, the Goons or Round the Horn, and later gathering by the telly to watch something.

It started with the anticipation of what was to come, discussions on the previous show and the fun or suspense of sharing the programme.

And that was followed up with the conversations the following day at school or work in which catch phrases were exchanged, with one prompting another.  

In my case aged 16 it was the banter that accompanied the Angus Prune tune from I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, Zebedee’s authoritarian command in The Magic Round About or the outrageous suggestions made by Kenneth Williams in Round the Horn.

All of which made the weekly fall out from that single programme a big social event.

But now we have the boxed set, and there is little time to swop anecdotes, or bounce possible plot or joke scenarios, because one episode follows another in a continuous flow.

Less single stand alone and more a six hour film, only broken by the credits, cast list and opening images as one instalment follows another.

The upside is that you get to immerse yourself in the drama, the downside is that what starts at 6 in the evening finishes sometime around 2pm with the added drawback that there is nothing left to watch for the next few weeks.

Currently there are three series making their weekly way across the television channels, all of which will not finish for a month, and we have binge watched the entire set of episodes.

So perhaps there is merit in rationing your viewing.

Leaving me just to reflect that the “history” of this story is that simple observation.

This was how we did  it in the olden days and to misappropriate  President Kennedy's speech in the September of 1962 on deciding to commit the United States to a space programme which would end with a landing on the Moon, we choose to binge watch because its fun and we can.

I could quote the speech in full to further cement the history but I wont.

Location; our front room

Pictures; boxed sets I have in the collection