Flipping hell!
Millions of TV shows, oodles of options, same old story: We flip and scroll through a night of empty promises
“No ipping” was the line the late, great Larry Sanders would throw us just before going to a commercial break. Back then, before streaming and bingewatching and box-sets, ipping was a big deal. Larry (as played by the late great Garry Shandling) was also a big deal, the host of a spoof late night chat-show called e Larry Sanders Show. You might also recall a show called Flipper which was about a talking dolphin. Most people ipped when they saw Flipper. As we were stranded in Single Channel Land in those days, we had no option, so we just ipped out the door.
Now in the age of in nite choice, ipping is an even bigger ipping deal: a million channels, nothing on, ipping hell. But if ipping is soul destroying, scrolling is worse. Some nights I can’t stop. Like last evening, when I spent hours scrolling through a zillion shows on Net ix, right down to the one with the singing detective in Delhi (or did I imagine that?) before switching o without choosing anything at all. Some call this the burden of choice. Others call it a legacy of the Age of Indecision. I call it a pain in the wrist and the death of the imagination.
Last week, I started watching Bandersnatch. I haven’t nished yet and I suspect I never will. is interactive Net ix drama (reported on elsewhere in this magazine) o ers the illusion of choice but in reality it nails you down to a grim black and white world where you really don’t have any control at all. Walk, Don’t Walk; Talk, Don’t Talk; and so on. Of course, with your smart TV being actually smarter than you, it will tell you what to watch based on your history. You can throw a spanner in the works in the hope of ummoxing the algorithm by watching ten seconds of say a hundred di erent shows. Algorithm that, Mister Smart TV! Anyway back to Flipper, who continues to haunt my dreams with his beaky mouth and cold dead eyes. Was he really telling us where the bad guys were hanging out or were those guttural utterances a cry to mammals everywhere that ipping is not an option? If you haven’t seen Flipper, you probably won’t now. But do watch e Larry Sanders Show. It’s ipping gold.