Are you well-watched?

Forget books – now the way to show off is to name-drop TV shows, says ITV boss

SHOWING off at dinner parties used to involve boasting about your knowledge of books, films or classical music.

Conversations were peppered with references to the new Zadie Smith novel, Tarantino movie or Simon Rattle recording.

But these days, guests are as just as likely to dissect television shows such as Broadchurch and Fleabag, according to the boss of iTV. Dame Carolyn McCall claims being ‘well-watched’ has become as important as being well-read, telling a media conference yesterday: ‘Conversations around TV now have more of a book club feel.

‘As well as being well-read, you can now be well-watched, and that never really happened before.’

While people used to talk about plot twists, you now score points for talking about detail such as characterisation and camerawork, she said. ‘Spoilers are a huge social faux pas and people are really growing much more comfortable talking about themes, production quality and great characters.’

Dinner guests are dissecting modern TV classics such as Killing Eve or The Americans in the way they once would the novels of Charles Dickens or ian McEwan.

And literary classics such as Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and Tolstoy’s War And Peace can be analysed with reference to recent high-profile TV adaptations.

Dame Carolyn’s claim follows growing evidence that the expansion of social media and user-generated video has thrust television up the social pecking order.

Many parents now see watching television with their children as a way of spending ‘quality time’ together, according to Ofcom.

Dame Carolyn told the London conference, co-hosted by Deloitte and Enders, that viewers increasingly shape their lives around what they watch.

‘ice rinks fill up when Dancing On ice is on,’ she said. ‘People rush out to buy books featured on TV, ingredients on cookery shows sell out completely and people redesign their gardens and houses based on TV.’