Struggling to feed my binge-watch addiction

Times

7 days ago

I've spent every evening of the past month joylessly making my way through episode after episode of The Walking Dead, and it has taken me a while to work out why. The pace is inconsistent, the violence is deadening, the tone is all over the place, but if I persist it's because it is the last bit of critically acclaimed television available for binge-viewing.
It once felt as if we could spend the rest of our lives immersed in great television, but after many of us spent the pandemic catching up on everything we had missed, from The Wire to Breaking Bad and Narcos, there's not much left.
Great new telly is being made — I've loved Adolescence, Wolf Hall, The Last of Us and The Gold recently — but it's drip fed in short single series and cannot be made quickly enough for us to lose ourselves in it for weeks at a time. The golden age of bingeing, when you watched so much Mad Men that you started having dreams about Don Draper, is truly over.
What will we do with our evenings now? I have 11 series of The Walking Dead and six spin-off series to decide. But I'm worried it might involve reading a book. Or, even worse, talking to my family again.
• I watched David Attenborough — is he trying to make me have a baby?
It's wedding season, and as I've sat through various Christian, Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and secular ceremonies (including my own) this year, I've found myself wondering why people don't combine the best bits of the traditions. I mean, if people can now write their own vows, why not go further?
The perfect wedding would, first of all, involve elements of the ashirvad ceremony in (some) Hindu weddings, where (sometimes) married women and elders whisper advice into the bride's ear. Though I would want to broadcast the advice that's being given to the congregation, and open it out to divorcees. After all, we learn most through failure.
I'd also nick the 'milni' from Punjabi tradition: when corresponding relatives, from the groom's and bride's respective sides, greet one another in sometimes physically overwhelming ways. It's a nice way to highlight that a marriage is a coming together of families, and gives bored guests something to watch.
• Ease costs and cut red tape to make wedding bells appealing
Meanwhile, it's always entertaining when those gathered at Protestant weddings are asked if they have any objections to the marriage (the drama!), everyone loves a singalong (Jerusalem!), and the breaking of plates and glasses in Jewish tradition is hugely therapeutic (maybe the wedding breakfast could end with everyone smashing their crockery).
If time allowed, the whole thing could end like a Formula 1 race, with champagne being poured over the couple rather than the usual boring confetti. You'd risk being accused of cultural appropriation, of course, but all culture is appropriated from somewhere else, and most wedding 'traditions' were actually invented relatively recently. I'm available for bookings.
Last month I wrote about how climate change risks destroying all kinds of British traditions. In short, we're not going to be so keen on scones, hot tea and Greggs sausage rolls when we have the weather of Miami.
And last week The Times bought news of another casualty: the convertible. Apparently, a new study has found the number of convertible models on offer for sale in Britain is at a 25-year low. The report blamed the rise of the SUV. But I think it's more likely to be about the weather.
If Britain has enjoyed one of the highest rates of convertible ownership in the world, it's because the weather has, until now, been so woeful that when the sun finally does shine, we overreact and want to lap up every second of it. See also: the phenomenon of the spring barbecue and lads walking topless through Wolverhampton city centre in 11C 'heat'.
But now it's too hot for convertibles. A lesson that thousands of British tourists learn every year when they visit Las Vegas or Florida, pay over the odds to hire a convertible Ford Mustang and then don't put the roof down once. Admit it, lots of you have been there.
• French fires: our wine will taste of smoke, says family who lost it all
Social media post of the month — @prof-hinkley.bsky.social on Bluesky: 'I love my stepladder as if it was my own.'