If we are what we watch, then this column was written by Jerry Seinfeld, or maybe Tony Soprano. Or a combination of the two, although I’m not sure Tony Seinfeld sounds menacing enough to cut it in the New Jersey mob.
People have always perceived social cachet in their cultural choices. So what do your viewing and subscription habits say about you? To be clear, we are talking about mainstream channels here. You know what your OnlyFans sub says.
So who are you? Are you a Paramount Plus type? Or maybe a Disney devotee. Perhaps you’ve kept that Sky subscription because you are only on season 13 of Grey’s Anatomy and still have another 700 episodes to get through.
There is no longer the same unified community of television that existed when there were only a handful of channels. You could once be confident that almost everyone like you watched the same shows and understood the same references. This is why a generation of Gen X or boomer men will offer entire renditions of Python sketches the moment a keyword is uttered. Anyone foolish enough to observe that they did not expect the Spanish Inquisition will immediately deserve to be tortured with the reminder that its main weapons are surprise and fear, oh and ruthless efficiency — see what I mean?
Today word of mouth, or word of TikTok, is even more essential. But how many streaming services are you prepared to pay for? It is fairly easy to join up and cancel once you’ve watched the show that interests you. But it is also fairly easy to forget to cancel.
So what do your choices say about you? Netflix says relatively little except that for some reason you carry on paying even though you sit there night after night complaining that there is never anything you want to watch, aside from reruns and the movies of Jason Statham.
An Amazon Prime subscription probably means you paid for the free priority postage so thought you might as well take a look. You also like being able to watch only one leg of European football matches.
Disney+ means you have small children or essentially still are a small child. Adults with Disney+ and no children are obsessed with spin-offs from the superhero series or Star Wars. You are absurdly excited by the new Avengers movie. Alternatively you once nicked a password from a friend to watch the Beatles documentary and have hung on to it, telling people you only keep it so you can watch The Bear.
A commitment to Paramount Plus means you are a sucker for soap operas about grizzled, old, salt of the earth no-nonsense ranchers. Or perhaps oilmen who are fighting back against bureaucrats, regulators, lawyers and environmentalists who are threatening their way of life — and whose wives spend all day shopping and glamming up for when they get home. Maybe that’s slightly unfair. There are also series about good old salt of the earth gangsters whose way of life is threatened too. Paramount Plus is a channel for men who miss westerns. It is essentially the GB News of light entertainment, the channel for everyone thinking of voting Reform at the next election and who suspects that Jeremy Clarkson is secretly a bit of a leftie.
Now TV is for people who did not want to shell out for a Sky subscription and haven’t realised it would have in fact been cheaper to have done so.
You got Apple TV+ during the pandemic and are prevented from cancelling by the fact that its four good shows are evenly distributed throughout the year.
Discovery Plus has a bit of everything you like, especially cycling, but not enough to justify a subscription so it’s primarily for those who don’t care how much they are spending. Channel 4’s is the saddest service since it exists solely for those who want to rewatch programmes from when Channel 4 was still good.
ITVX is primarily for those who feel short-changed by only two hours of Love Island content. As for iPlayer, well, it’s the BBC and you’ve probably paid for it anyway so you might as well give it a quick skim, if only to annoy The Telegraph.
Oh, and if you actually watch any of these on your TV, I regret to inform you that you are no longer young.
Email Robert at magazineletters@ft.com
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