The underrated pleasure of staying on one TV channel all night
I don't know why I've held on to this memory, but when I was about five I was having a low-level bad day – it seemed to involve some angst about a grazed knee – and I was consoling myself with thoughts of watching Doctor Who as soon as I got home.
This wasn't some cool, modern Doctor. These were repeats on the ABC of Tom Baker in a chunky knitted scarf. I didn't have the foggiest idea what was going on in most of the plot lines, but I probably would have accepted anything in that after-school timeslot with equanimity.
Now, of course, there would be any one of a hundred televisual choices at my fingertips, but I don't know that I would be happier for it.
A lot of high-quality television is being made right now, and I've watched a lot of it with gusto. Ted Lasso was tender and joyful. The Last of Us, Succession and Fake were spectacular in very different ways. But having too much choice can be paralysing. There's even a name for it: the paradox of choice.
It is possible to scroll for hours on a streaming service without feeling any great conviction about one's eventual choice, precisely because there is always something else one might have chosen. It is low-stakes decision-making, but it can still be exhausting.
That's where a free-to-air multichannel steps up. It is the balm on my grazed knee.
On a recent weeknight, Nine Go! – one of the network's digital channels – offered a tasty smorgasbord of the same TV treats I watched in my childhood, topped off with a nighttime showing of The Matrix. Heaven.
Many of these shows (including those in earlier timeslots, such as Bewitched and The Addams Family) were decades old when I first saw them and looked positively ancient to me at the time. Now they are supremely comforting by virtue of their association with my junior years.
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