Netflix could go down in history for killing off the last public space

For my son’s ninth birthday this week, we had a family outing to the local multiplex. It was wonderfully luxurious compared with the cramped, overcrowded, armpit-smelling cinemas of my own youth. We lounged in huge reclining chairs, with so much leg room I could barely touch the seat in front with the tips of my toes. And here’s the uncanny thing: we were the only people there. “This is great,” declared the birthday boy. “It’s just like watching telly at home.”

Those are words to chill a cinephile’s blood. Television has long been the mortal enemy of cinema: after the invention of commercial television sets, cinema attendance in this country plunged from a peak of

1.6 billion (in 1946), to a trough of just 54million (in 1984). Cinema chains have gone to huge lengths since then to make the experience more appealing. The venues are swankier, the snacks gigantic-er, the screens themselves much better quality. And attendance numbers have bounced back a little. Last year, the British made 176million trips to the cinema – the highest figure since 1971.

But now there’s a new threat circling in the water. As Helen Mirren put it this week: “I love Netflix – but f*** Netflix.” The streaming giant has started producing its own feature films, such as the Oscar-winning Roma, and releasing them straight onto its television platform without observing the traditional 12-week period of cinema-only distribution.

Lovers of the big screen are in despair. Mirren argues that streaming is in danger of destroying one of Western society’s few remaining collective experiences. In a cinema, she says, “you’re all in it together. You’re frightened, you laugh, you cry all together. It’s a communal thing. And that’s beginning to disappear”.

Pubs, libraries,

nightclubs, even supermarkets – all the places we used to gather are being hollowed out.

Does Netflix really want to be remembered by history for killing off the last public space?

My mum got married in a Mary Quant mini-dress. Made from dotted Swiss lawn, with a Peter Pan collar and long puffed sleeves, it had a frilled hem that stopped halfway up the thigh. She wore it with a white pill box hat and a pair of white block-heeled pumps. Her hair had been cut into an elfin bob by the ultra-chic Leonard of Mayfair.

Just as it is mercifully difficult to imagine your parents having sex, it is hard to believe they were ever cool. It is only now, reading the rave reviews of the Mary Quant exhibition at the V&A, that the full excellence of Mum’s wedding outfit dawns on me.

Once my sister and I came along, Mum stopped buying clothes. She didn’t have enough time or money for fashion. With the blithe self-absorption of the young, I mistook her thriftiness for a lack of interest. I wasn’t even especially grateful when she let me wear the Mary Quant dress to my first disco.

I didn’t have anything to wear, and the pretty white dress had been hanging in her wardrobe forever. So I asked to borrow it. Without demurring, Mum took it off the hanger and slipped it over my head. Then, her mouth bristling with pins, she snipped and sliced at the precious frock until it was small enough for my skinny 11-year-old frame.

I took her generosity entirely for granted then. Now, as a wife and mother myself, I am awed by it.