Autumn is here and with it an excuse to press play on all our old favorites. As the weather is getting colder and the nights are getting darker, there’s nothing like snuggling up on the sofa with a cup of tea, a cozy blanket, and a heaping plate of warm fuzzies.
Rewatch season is well and truly back.
But what is it about these quintessential “comfort shows” that makes them such a staple on our screens? It’s not as if we’re lacking in fresh TV; there seems to be a new show, new movie, new breakthrough every other day. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming giants churn out hundreds of series a year, with bigger budgets, crazier storylines, and more drama per season than the entire plot of Gilmore Girls.
Yet, you rarely hear your friends looking forward to a night in with a glass of wine and a cheeky box set of Ginny and Georgia. You’re unlikely to find many TikToks announcing that it’s officially Slow Horses season. Shows in the 2020s just don’t seem to have that impact that guarantees them a spot on our Watch Next lists year after year.
So what’s the deal?
Well, I’ve narrowed it down to three key points and, like that 5th rerun of Friends, none of them will surprise you.
The Power Of Nostalgia
A well watched show is like a beloved family recipe. It’s familiar. It’s routine. It reminds you of simpler times, all wrapped in an easily bingeable bow. Why attempt to keep up with the endless content avalanche today when you could press play on a time where things were just so much easier.
It’s nostalgia, baby. And you can’t compete with the past.
There’s a reason why autumn is the season to settle in with all our old faves. We’re in the final quarter of the year, time has inevitably zoomed by, and suddenly we’re all that little bit older. It’s a strange period, chock full of reflection and longing for more time. Or sometimes, just a different time. A way of almost drip-feeding nostalgia in safe, easily manageable 43 minute chunks.
(And it helps that many of our go-to’s fit perfectly into that fall aesthetic.)
Even our favourite stars do the same, with Billie Eilish saying back in 2020
“The Office is my therapy, bro. It's like my little escape”
The comfortability that comes with rerunning the same series over and over until the characters start to feel like friends is a feeling that just can’t be achieved in the same way by a show released three years ago. We’ve known Ross and Rachel since the 90s. That kind of loyalty takes graft.
Of course, that’s not to say serials released today don’t have the potential to become the next staple in our autumn rewatch rotation but you can’t just speed run reminiscence.
Like a fine wine or a blue cheese, a show needs to age.
TV Is Now Our Second Screen
It can’t be denied that TV often plays second fiddle to whatever is on our social media feeds. We have our big screens, our medium screens, and our small screens. Often all at the same time. Our attention is almost always split a thousand different ways across a thousand different apps to the point that whatever is playing in the corner of the room is basically just background noise.
Not necessarily the perfect recipe for a brand new, highly complicated crime drama with 6 seasons.
The thing is streaming services can’t guarantee that today’s audiences are going to stay locked into every episode.
We’re just not.
We’re on Instagram.
But the trick is we don’t want to feel like we’re missing anything. So we stick something on that we’ve seen before. Something familiar. We’ve already met the cast, we already know every twist, and we can scroll away in peace. The show becomes less of a watching experience and more of an ambience machine, playing on and on without needing any sort of focus. And, since most comfort shows are at least ten years old, all the content is all 100% available. Neatly packaged. Waiting for your yearly binge.
And that in itself is comforting.
A series that you could repeat in your sleep is inherently more second screen friendly than that one show that came out two months ago. Especially one whose second season doesn’t come out for another year.
That’s a big commitment!
Rose Tinted Authenticity
How often have you settled in to binge that classic decade old series and thought
Wow. They just don’t make shows like this anymore.
Shows today rarely have that zest, do they? That magic?
It is true that media companies churn out serials and films at an insane rate, all to keep up with the ever increasing trend cycle and ever distracted audience. When companies are expected to produce a certain amount of release-ready content per year, it is simply not possible to maintain a high standard of plot and character development every single time on that tight of a turn around.
Fair play, Netflix. I’ll give you that one.
However, this does once again push audiences back into the arms of shows that they feel just did it better. They had more time, better writing, and admittedly less concern over being politically correct. As a result, many viewers lean towards these more relaxed series that provide the authenticity missing on today’s screens.
It is worth remembering that we are probably looking back at these shows with rose tinted glasses. Nostalgia aside, when only the best of the best survive the chasm that is media licensing, we end up comparing the greatest across decades past with…literally everything on offer today.
Of course the ratio is going to be a bit skewed.
Television is a fickle beast. Shows that maybe didn’t pack a punch on release sometimes find their niche years later or are smash hits but burn too bright and too fast, lost to one-hit-wonder obscurity.
Longevity is all about how familiar you can make your content to your audience.
It’s like the stages of a relationship.
We’re only on our third date with The Bear. But we’re decades deep with Parks and Rec.
And that’s where our loyalty lies.