TV viewers are craving comfort food. 2021 will deliver
Every bad thing that happened during the last 12 months was accompanied by a similar reaction: “Hey, it’s 2020.”
The combination of a cataclysmic pandemic and nail-biting election reduced many Americans to parttime shut-ins and full-time nervous wrecks: tense, anxious, germophobic, claustrophobic, agoraphobic, pretty much everything-phobic.
But at least there was a seemingly bottomless well of one home remedy close at hand: television shows. Thanks to the ever-expanding world of streaming television, people cowering in their homes could find endless diversion if they sought it out (and were able to pay for it).
Look for more in 2021. For people exhausted from the tension and worry of the past year, television, especially on streaming services, apparently wants to provide what has often been called “comfort food.”
In entertainment, that boils down to fantasy and familiar: fantasy shows that people can escape into and old shows they have loved before.
In one recent week in November, Nielsen put out a list of most-watched shows on four top streamers (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Disney+). Number one was the breakthrough Netflix drama “The Queen’s Gambit” (all about a young woman who spends most of her time cooped up playing chess); but that was followed by repeats of the NBC comedy “The Office,” and further down the list four other shows that started out years ago on broadcast network: “Grey’s Anatomy,” “NCIS,” “Criminal Minds” and “The Blacklist.”
That is all about a retreat into the familiar.
The third title on that list is Disney’s “The Mandalorian.” The “Star Wars” spinoff in its second season is a bona-fide streaming hit.
So it’s hardly surprising that Disney+ is packing its 2021 lineup with other “Star Wars”-related shows: Production is scheduled to start next year for a big one, “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” which will star Ewan McGregor again in the title role, making it both fantasy and familiar; “The Bad Batch” will be an animated series based on the characters from “The Clone Wars.”