Repeat viewing: why the past is the future of our TV schedules
The coronavirus has changed television as nothing has done before. New dramas have been delayed for months. Never-ending soaps have dropped off the screen as socially distanced episodes are cobbled together. And, with a summer of sport suspended, broadcasters have resorted to showing us an array of repeats.
These are always a bone of contention for British viewers. The word “repeat” carries associations of laziness on the part of the broadcaster and of something not worth seeing again for the viewer. Yet much of what is being shown again is surprisingly potent emotionally and resonates more deeply than you might have suspected.
Take, for example, the BBC’s Olympics coverage. With Tokyo 2020 suspended, it has dedicated endless hours to repeating sporting moments from London 2012, Beijing 2008 and Rio 2016. It is, of course, never not weird to watch shooting and archery finals 12 years after they took place. And with the BBC showing each day of each Olympics in order, too, it feels so W1A at times that it’s worth recalling that broadcasting such repeats was a joke in a recent W1A lockdown sketch, from Tracey Pritchard: “We’re going to repeat the whole of the 2012 Olympics day by day, starting with the opening ceremony. Even the bit with Sir Paul McCartney.”
Yet watching it is a joy. The coverage is less about being reminded of who won gold than recalling where you were when it all actually happened: how you fell out of bed to catch the rowing, stayed up for the athletics and got sucked in by sports you didn’t understand. There’s an added charm in the unpredictability of the action, hearing household names being introduced as strangers, only for the commentators to lose their minds (and voices) as the contestants reach victory.
Last Friday, the BBC repeated the entire London 2012 opening ceremony. How was it possible to rewatch an event that created such feelings of hope, when everything felt so united in such sad and divided times? You dwell on that, but then get taken in by Danny Boyle’s reimagining of the
Industrial Revolution; the sheer height of the chimneys and remembering how loudly you reacted when the Queen met James Bond. The fact that you’re watching it all again doesn’t reduce what it was originally. It just makes you grateful we had it. Life wasn’t perfect then – we were two years into austerity – but the Olympics provided a joyful moment of national unity, and an aura in which it is nice to bask, even for a couple of hours.
Not all of the repeats have provided such warm and fuzzy feelings. E4 recently repeated, for 10 days straight, classic episodes of Big Brother, in full, with Rylan and Davina commentaries. There was an avalanche of quotable moments, from Nasty Nick’s “dirty game” to George Galloway’s “Would you like me to be the cat?” Then there was Big Brother 7, featuring one of the most memorable contestants, Nikki Grahame, uttering one of the show’s most memorable lines: “Who isshe?”
But viewers had not expected what followed: an uncomfortable hour featuring two housemates picking on each other, moments that seemingly passed us by at the time, but would cause uproar if they happened today. Seeing the repeat gave pause for thought. Could Big Brother ever return when the mental health of reality-show participants has been so under the spotlight?
Other television repeats make you realise how much things have changed for the better. I haven’t seen Hollyoaks in years, but having been a teenage viewer, it’s absorbing to watch the secret John Paul and Craig relationship from 2007 again, possibly the most popular storyline the soap has ever had. It culminated with (spoiler alert) Craig’s fiancee, Sarah, walking in on him and John Paul in bed together during Sarah and Craig’s engagement party.
Watching it now, it’s easy to be distracted with the thick Nokia phones and the hair fringes, but you also realise how a same-sex relationship on screen, secret or not, felt revolutionary and even risky before the watershed. These days, a soap without LGBT characters, or any drama without some sort of queer representation, feels out of step. All of this change has happened in just over a decade.
But the most unexpected aspect of watching these repeats is a weird sense of hope. I was dreading the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage. It was particularly jarring watching the hosts present from the Glastonbury site, too, especially as it confirmed how glorious the weather would have been had it not been cancelled. But then I watched the Beyoncé set from 2011 and Adele from 2016 and I realised that, in the grand scheme of things, the awful pain of the past few months had been short compared with the years of normality beforehand. And, although we don’t know what is to come, it felt as if there would be Glastonburys and Olympics and other united moments of television in the future.
Our world is darker – but that doesn’t diminish what many of TV’s celebratory moments were. And it makes you wonder when such united, hopeful moments will happen again. Who would have thought television repeats could bring us that – along with the profound cultural and social questions that seeing them now raises?