The decision by Netflix to allow viewers to watch its content speeded up is an act of vandalism, says Aidan Smith

Yesterday morning I turned on the TV to hear my breakfast show anchors of choice snort at the news that Jennifer Aniston sometimes hits the gym at 3am. The presenters were incredulous. Why would anyone do this? It was blindingly obvious to me – to look like Jennifer Aniston, for one thing.

Here’s another thing: there’s so much entertainment that we need to consume, and Aniston herself has just added to the culture mountain with the flagship drama of the new Apple TV+ streaming service, why not get the workout done in the still of the night when Kanye West tends not to release any new music and the bookshops aren’t open so you can’t nip round for the latest instalment of Ben Lerner state-ofamerica metafiction?

Hang on, who “nips round” to bookshops anymore? You Amazon Prime your books, CDS and DVDS straight to your front door. Press ‘buy’ on your smartphone and it activates a cattle-prod which wakes the delivery man at roughly the same time as Aniston is battering her X-trainer and he’ll leap into action, ensuring your musthave goods arrive before you head out to work to begin another timepoor day. You’re about to thank the courier but he’s already back in his van. In fact, he may already be peeing into a bottle, which is what these guys have to do because the next customer on the list wanted his must-have goods ten minutes ago.

You think such indignities are far-fetched? Ken Loach’s new film, Sorry We Missed You, tells you that they’re not. What, you haven’t seen that one yet? Call yourself acrosseverything or, as we used to say, hep-cat with-it? The movie opened on Friday – what the hell have you been doing since then? Why do we need to work? Why can’t we spend our days consuming all this stuff? Well, assuming you’re not syphoning it illegally, you need money to pay for it.

The Smith household’s monthly bill for non-terrestrial telly has just shot up to beyond 70 quid, so we’re about to cancel some subscriptions. I reckon I’ve got enough saved, series-linked, supposedly life-enhancing, apparently conversation-enriching, unmissable but as yet unwatched programmes to last me until I fall off my chaise longue and can’t get back up.

Every time I listen to Radio 4’s Front Row or watch one of these review shows on TV – the kind which Monty Python used to send up by having the participants look like their heads were about to explode out of their turtle-necked jumpers from containing too many long-winded opinions – I strongly suspect their clocks must run slower than mine, otherwise how can they possibly have seen everything, read everything, listened to everything including the latest underwhelming Kanye album?

Maybe, though, it’s their art which runs faster. Netflix has just devised a feature which enables viewers to watch movies and drama series speeded up. What a wizard wheeze, and what an appalling idea.

It’s out-and-out vandalism, tampering with the work like this, and it has outraged film-makers and actors. Judd Apatow, director of The 40-Year-old Virgin, pleaded with audiences: “Don’t f*** with our timing. We give you nice things. Leave them as they were intended to be seen.”

Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul feared Netflix “completely taking control of everyone’s art and destroying it”. Peter Ramsey, who won an Oscar for last year’s Spider