Pushing the envelope - Netflix ends DVD rentals

Picture: Netflix

The DVD had barely been in existence when I moved to Silicon Valley at the beginning of 2001. I should know: I’d been involved in launching the format just four years earlier. It was, as tech executives are prone to say, a “game changer” - storing an entire film on, effectively, a CD with picture quality visibly superior to VHS tape. No wonder it was the subject of an obligatory ‘format war’ between rival companies promoting their respective high-capacity video disc platforms with the hope of benefitting from lucrative patents.

As the DVD was in 1998, the Internet was in relative mass-adoption infancy when 26-year-old former US Marine and Stanford computer science graduate Reed Hastings launched Netflix in the Silicon Valley satellite town of Los Gatos. Hastings cleverly combined the nascent DVD format with an online portal for home video rental to rent out new-release films for $6 each, with up to three discs at a time sent out by post. The first disc Netflix sent out was a copy of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice.

Four years later the New York Times reported that Netflix was sending out almost 200,000 discs every day to some 670,000 monthly subscribers, a figure that soon ballooned to a million. By then, amongst hyper-tech savvy Silicon Valley residents, Netflix’s distinctive red envelopes were landing on doormats like leaves in an autumn storm. Moreover, it became routine for subscribers to go to ever-more creative lengths to post them back to Netflix before late fees were applied. I was travelling quite a bit within the US at the time for work, so I would take my return envelopes with me, looking for the most obscure and remote postbox locations from which to send them, just for a laugh. 

Equally entertaining was the creation of the wishlist from which films were chosen: unlike a traditional video rental shop, browsing Netflix’s menus ensured that at any given time, as soon as you’d returned one disc, another would be on its way. As a result, there would be tremendous expectation of a new disc or discs arriving in the post.

Of course, this all now seems rather arcane, given the overwhelming pivot toward on-demand services such as Netflix itself. But go back to the early 2000s and Netflix can be credited with not only driving the popularity of DVD, but also opening up a mesmerising choice of rentable titles, from big-budget blockbusters to independent productions, documentaries and cult Japanese anime films. 

Indeed at one point, Netflix was sending out more than a million discs a day drawn from a 75,000-strong library, enabling the likes of me to experience films I would never have watched had I been hurriedly scanning VHS spines - with my head cocked awkwardly to one side while trying to read vertically - in a traditional rental shop, the likes of which arguably Netflix put paid to.

Incredibly, though, Netflix has not stopped its DVD service, even after launching its now ubiquitous streaming platform in 2007. Until now: “After an incredible 25-year run, we’ve made the difficult decision to wind down at the end of September”, Netflix’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos said earlier this year, hailing how the company’s DVD postal service had “paved the way for the shift to streaming”.

Picture: Netflix

Not surprisingly, maintaining the DVD rental business has, according to Sarandos, “become increasingly difficult”, accounting for just $126 million of Netflix’s total revenues of over $31 billion. Still, not a bad return. However, the end of DVD rentals does come at a time of changing fortunes for Netflix, for the first time in its 25-year history. Rival streaming services such as Disney+, Apple TV and Paramount+ have been increasingly eating into revenues and subscribers, leading to Netflix losing a million of them in the first six months of last year, its first audience decline in a decade.

To counter this the company began introducing new tiers of advertising-supported packages, as well as announcing a crackdown on so-called password sharing, a less-than popular measure amongst families seeing teenagers head off to university with barely the financial means to remain connected to their favourite shows.

At its peak, the DVD service had more than 16 million subscribers, but today the number is just 1.5 million, and all based in the US. Contrast that with the 223 million subscribers Netflix’s VOD service has globally. Given the relative numbers, winding up the DVD business will barely meet a whimper but there are still those who, 25 years on, swear by it. “When you open your mailbox, it’s still something you actually want instead of just bills,” subscriber Amanda Konkle of Savannah, Georgia, told Associated Press, having been using the platform since 2005.

Others have continued to rent DVDs from Netflix because, surprisingly, it invariably offers a greater choice of titles. Licensing conditions on the streaming service can mean that some films are available only during a particular window. 

Some subscribers even came back to Netflix’s DVD rentals during the pandemic as - incredible to think as it is - they ran out of things to watch via online platforms. Many - especially scholars of film history - have found Netflix’s vast library of vintage movies indispensable. 

That said, the company has been progressively winding down the DVD service, reducing the availability of many titles as logistics and other resources have been diverted into the main business. “Our goal has always been to provide the best service for our members,” Sarandos said in a statement, “but as the business continues to shrink that’s going to become increasingly difficult.” As the company itself acknowledged in a letter to investors earlier this year, the DVD service was the "booster rocket that got streaming to a leading position".

The DVD itself is not dead yet. Much like the optical CD technology from which it was adapted by Philips, Sony and their rivals at Toshiba, people are still buying DVDs. The Salvation Army says that DVD sales have more than doubled in ten years at their charity shops, as entire collections have been donated and then snapped up on a whim. Another charity, the British Heart Foundation, said that they had sold more than 1.9 million DVDs last year through their shops. 

Like collecting rare records and books, the ‘lucky find’ is helping, as those trying to find out-of-print titles or not available on streaming services come across rarities. And as the cost-of-living crunch continues to bite, families are even ‘cord cutting’ and returning to physical forms of entertainment that cost a fraction of the monthly cost of online packages. Similarly, there are plenty of households disenfranchised from video streaming due to the fact they live in communities with poor or even non-existent broadband.

There’s no doubt that the rise of streaming has created vast gaps on living room bookshelves - mine especially. My own DVD collection now occupies a sizeable corner of a storage facility (at some stage, to be bequeathed to a charity shop). There is always the chance that DVD might go through a vinyl-style revival, much as CDs continue to sell in the era of Spotify. 

But unlike the business model for music streaming platforms - which is great for the consumer but lousy for the artist - video remains in the grip of Hollywood pricing mechanisms. While it might seem like buying a film from video on demand service is not the same as owning it, I have far less emotional attachment to the DVDs now collecting dust than my CDs (which already went through one purge, 13 years ago, when my library was more or less halved).

I’m probably just not as attached to films as music, knowing that most of what I like to watch is available to stream to my living room TV or my iPad with equal ease and none of the clutter. That said, I can’t help but echo Amanda Konkle: back in the day, when those red envelopes appeared through the front door, there was a sense of excitement not generated since by scrolling through a menu with a remote control. The early days of the Internet, eh?

Clarkson!

Picture: Amazon

Sometimes in the culture wars, events contrive to create the perfect storm. In the case of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex - Harry and Meghan, to you and me - the storm is a permanent state of enragement, much like that giant red cyclone near the equator of Jupiter.

For one newspaper in particular - obviously, the Daily Mail - it is ever-present. On any given day there are four or five stories about Harry, or Meghan, or both. At the height of the furore over Harry’s memoir Spare, you’d be lucky to find coverage of anything else. In recent days, though, the Mail’s apparent obsession with the Sussexes has died down to just four or five new stories a day. That, though, is still tempered by an injection of beatific pieces about Harry’s brother and sister-in-law, the Prince and Princess of Wales. It has been a prominent feature of the British media's editorial polarity that picture stories of the ever-smiling Catherine, her heir-to-the-throne husband and their adorable children get prominence in contrast to the prevailingly negative coverage of Harry and Meghan. Don’t tell me there isn’t an agenda going on there…

Back in December, before Spare came out, and in the wake of the royal couple’s exorcising Netflix series, Jeremy Clarkson stuck his size 14s in by writing a wholly offensive column for The Sun in which he suggested that Meghan should be paraded naked through the streets of Britain while having excrement flung at her by the public. He wasn't, to the best of anyone's knowledge, being literal, but in that oh-so Clarksonesque way, it was a clumsy reference to a scene from Game Of Thrones with which to emphasise the “hate” - his word – he had for the duchess “on a cellular level”. To hammer home his disdain, Clarkson placed the duchess above Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and even serial killer Rose West. Needless to say, the shit-slinging idea went down well with people on Twitter called “Daz” or “Barry” who suffix their handles with Cross of St. George flags, and whose timelines are regularly peppered with sentiment supportive of topics such as Brexit, defunding the BBC and bringing back Boris. Basically, anything starting with the letter b. 

This is the Clarkson fan base: ‘real blokes’ who like cars, football and probably still bemoan the disappearance of The Sun’s Page Three “stunnah”, which was, of course, always only “a bit of fun” and in no way a daily dose of sexist titillation (with the emphasis on “tit” – phwoar!). These are the self-styled anti-woke warriors, who feed - and feed off - the Daily Mail’s constant chuntering about anything remotely liberal, contriving a culture war angle out of anything. So, far from merely tolerating his occasional sexism and casual racism on Top Gear, Clarkson’s core demographic have fully bought into his reactionary schtick. Which means the egregious column he wrote in December was probably regarded by most of his following as grist to the mill.

Not so, everyone else. Within a matter of days the column had attracted a record 25,000 complaints to the press regulator Ipso. As a pile-on ensued, an apparently chastened Clarkson tweeted: “Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game Of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.” 

It wasn’t enough. Even to his daughter Emily. “My views are and have always been clear when it comes to misogyny, bullying and the treatment of women by the media,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything that my dad wrote about Meghan Markle and I remain standing in support of those that are targeted with online hatred.”

The broad view agreed. Clarkson senior had been deeply misogynist. Questions were asked of the editorial governance at The Sun to have allowed the column to have run in the first place, with former Sun editor Neil Wallis calling it a “dreadful failure of editing.” Immediately, questions arose as to the reputational damage Clarkson had done to the broadcasters who employ him, although while Kevin Lygo, ITV’s media and entertainment boss, described the column as “awful”, he said there were no plans to replace him as presenter of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. Amazon, which has paid Clarkson several millions to front the son-of-Top Gear, The Grand Tour, and the reality series Clarkson’s Farm, was less ambiguous. Described by Clarkson himself as “incandescent” over The Sun piece, the streaming service was reported by entertainment industry trade rag Variety as “cutting their ties” with the controversial presenter. This, in turn, set off the likes of the Daily Mail and its readers who predictably accused those offended by Clarkson of ‘cancelling’ the 62-year-old manchild. Except that he hasn’t, yet.

In fact, the Variety story said that it was only “likely” that Amazon would part ways with Clarkson, and following “the conclusion of existing agreements.” Those include one more series of The Grand Tour and two of Clarkson’s Farm. That will mean Clarkson remains onscreen with Amazon for at least the next two years. But, as we know with the tabloids’ obsession with woke-bashing, don’t let such practicalities get in the way of a good story.

Amazon has remained quiet on Clarkson’s future, although a “senior figure” connected with the company told the Telegraph that such talk of the presenter being cancelled because of his column in The Sun was “nonsense”. Another pointed out that Clarkson’s brand of gobshite controversy was hardly in the same league of offence-causing as some of the books Amazon sells, like Mein Kampf, or documentary series on Prime about serial killers. Actually, the storm only emboldens Clarkson’s brand. Ever since he started using strained metaphors in the ‘old’ Top Gear about cars “snapping knicker elastic”, he knowingly self-cultivated an image of being television’s actual Alan B’Stard, who comes out with mildly reactionary things just to get a rise. Boo!

It worked. Top Gear 2.0, with Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, became a juvenile version of Last Of The Summer Wine, pushing the tolerance envelope with obviously scripted routines that portrayed the trio as a group of overgrown schoolboys, rather than middle-aged motoring journalists. That was until the “slope” reference in a film the trio made in Thailand which was, we were assured, a statement about a camera angle. I don’t think the Thai gentleman in shot would have been amusedThe last straw, for the BBC, at least, came with Clarkson being sacked for punching a Top Gear producer while on location after being told that the crew’s hotel couldn’t prepare a late night steak for him.

Picture: Amazon

Thus, Amazon spent £160 million on luring Clarkson & Co over to Prime to develop The Grand Tour which was, blatantly, Top Gear 2.5. Same presenters, same schtick, same demographic. Except – and this gets to the bottom of Amazon’s possible tie-cutting - the blokeish Clarkson/May/Hammond humour is intrinsically British and, even then, quite narrow. The Telegraph revealed this week that Prime has around 200 million viewers worldwide, with three-quarters of them in America. In Britain, where The Grand Tour and Clarkson’s Farm will more or less exclusively resonate, Amazon can only command 12 million subscribers. All of a sudden, £160 million seems an awful lot of money. As the GT trio found with old-TG, their form of irony doesn’t always work in America. Clarkson’s Farm, too, is probably regarded as parochial (even though it is, actually, genuinely entertaining), but US ratings for it have been particularly poor. And with any poorly performing TV property, if it doesn’t rate, it gets the chop.

The beginning-of-the end for Clarkson on Amazon is, then, pure coincidence. But that won’t keep him out of the headlines. Last week it was revealed that he e-mailed Prince Harry on Christmas Day to apologise for his Sun column, saying that his language had been “disgraceful” and he was “profoundly sorry”. A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan were less than impressed: “While a new public apology has been issued today by Mr. Clarkson, what remains to be addressed is his long-standing pattern of writing articles that spread hate rhetoric, dangerous conspiracy theories and misogyny. Unless each of his other pieces were also written ‘in a hurry’ [as he apparently stated] it is clear that this is not an isolated incident shared in haste, but rather a series of articles shared in hate.”

Clarkson has, of course, not been cancelled. He will continue presenting Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ITV - for now - though the network has not confirmed anything more than another series. The Sun still employs him, though his columns have been conspicuously absent, and he still has a weekly appearance in The Sunday Times. So, no, the enfante terrible hasn’t succumbed to the tofu-eating wokerati. But maybe a period of abstinence - not just by Clarkson but the rest of the reactionary commentariat constantly searching for a new club to break over Harry and Meghan’s heads - might do us all some good.

Crown heights, lows and affairs

Picture: Netflix

The sight of Prince Charles, as was, wielding a pair of secateurs recently in an episode of The Repair Shop was a somewhat caramelised moment of royal PR. But given the near-constant political psychodrama of the last 12 months, the Royal Family has provided a welcome distraction.

In June we celebrated the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with street parties that had barely been cleared away when the monarch popped her clogs in September. Before that event there was a brief cameo from someone called Liz Truss, who was, apparently, Her Majesty’s Prime Minister for all but two days. Less than two months later, Truss was handing the keys to 10 Downing Street to His Majesty King Charles to pass on to Rishi Sunak, like the landlord of a high-turnover bedsit.

Westminster’s turmoil, coalescing around the craven behaviour of a tribe of professional politicians, successfully pushed into the background the occasional soap opera that is the House of Windsor. But tomorrow we’ll get a reminder of just how bad it can get when The Crown returns for its fifth, and arguably, most controversial series to date. More on that in a moment.

The Queen’s death in September brought about a genuine appreciation of the late monarch and her 70 years of service. Her son and heir has also enjoyed newfound national respect. But it hasn’t always been so, as The Crown will highlight. The four series so far have charted the Queen’s unexpected accession in 1952, through the changing topography of Britain’s reputation on the world stage, and that of its political domestic landscape, arriving at the apparent fairytale of Charles and his shy, aristocratic nursery school teacher bride. ‘Dianamania’ featured heavily in The Crown’s fourth series, but also the first signs of tensions in the royal marriage. That storyline will be turbocharged in Series 5, which has already been generating salivating ink, and not all of it good. 

Criticism of the show’s depiction of such relatively recent events has come from a variety of directions - people like Dame Judi Dench and two of the key political figures of the era, John Major and Tony Blair, all echoing calls that emerged during the last series that Netflix should run health warnings advising viewers that they’re watching a piece of fiction, not a documentary. But, to be blunt, you’d have to be particularly stupid to think that you were.

On one level The Crown is pure trash TV - the airport novel you leave behind in your hotel. And being something of a culture snob, too, I shouldn’t like it at all. I do quite like the Royal Family: not, you understand, in the manner of those dotty types with shelves of commemorative mugs who drape red, white and blue bunting outside their houses when one of the Buckingham Palace corgis has a birthday. But I do admire many of the things ‘The Firm’ does and stands for. I also accept, too, than in the aftermath of Diana’s death in 1997, the family - led by the Queen - went to some lengths to rehabilitate and modernise its reputation (although it would appear that Prince Andrew didn’t get that memo). None of this, however, will prevent the inevitable judgement that The Crown’s latest season will generate and is already. 

Picture: Netflix

It opens in 1991 with Prince and Princess of Wales on their so-called “second honeymoon” in the Mediterranean. The marriage was already in unhappy territory, as The Crown alluded to in the last series, but by 1991 it was rumoured to be in genuine trouble. The following year we learned by how much. 

1992 will forever be known as the Queen’s “annus horribilis” (mine wasn’t great, either - I was made redundant a month before Christmas. Yeah, thanks Sky TV...). She had a point, though: Charles and Diana formally separated, as did Prince Andrew from from Fergie (the duchess, not the football manager), the Princess Anne divorced Captain Mark Phillips, and a devastating fire broke out at Windsor Castle. The tabloids then had a field day over revelations that Fergie (the duchess, etc) had had an affair with a Texan millionaire, before being photographed sunbathing topless with another man who was not Prince Andrew. To cap it all, Andrew Morton’s tell-all book, Diana: Her True Story came out, revealing just how the marriage collapsed (with three people in it…) along with the princess’s own struggles with bulimia and suicidal thoughts. 1992, now I read all of this back to myself, is reminiscent of the opening titles voiceover of the sitcom Soap, which after an explanation of the Tate and Campbell families, and their latest complications, would intone: “Confused? You will be.” 

Picture: Netflix

There’s no doubt that the new series of The Crown will make for uncomfortable viewing in the royal household, in the unlikely event that any of them - even the renegade Prince Harry - decide to tune in. Not to add to hyperbolic tabloid examination at the time, the period it will cover was one of the most existential eras of royal history since the abdication of Edward VIII. Some might consider the period to be even more damaging than that.

The collapse of, and fallout from, Charles and Diana’s marriage will dominate the fifth season’s storyline, but there will be plenty of other elements to bait critics, including suggestions about Prince Philip’s fidelity, and that the Queen herself asked questions of her own about the relevance of a monarchy in contemporary times. Here’s where the backlash is both understandable, but also open to criticism: a somewhat salty drama about Henry VIII, Elizabeth I or even Edward and Wallace Simpson is historic fact; scarcely raising an eyebrow. But depict anything from more living memory is to commit an act of heresy. There in lies The Crown’s challenge: chronologically it has now reached the stage where its plot lines are interwoven into our modern, all-consuming media awareness. 

Last month Dame Judi Dench wrote a strongly-worded letter to The Times in which she said: “The closer [The Crown] comes to our present times, the more freely it seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism.” The tabloid and even the broadsheet media were nothing but crude sensationalism at the peak of Dianamania. On the morning she died in Paris in August 1997, I vividly remember the Sunday Times featuring something about Diana, Charles and even the young princes William and Harry in almost every section. The simple fact is that she sold newspapers like no other member of the Royal Family had before or, frankly, since.

In the new series it is suggested that Charles (played this time by Dominic West) was manoeuvring to get his-then 65-year-old mother to abdicate. He is also portrayed as believing the Queen (Imelda Staunton in this run) was neglectful towards him. In her missive, Dench wrote: “This is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent. No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged.” She called on Netflix to reconsider a decision not to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode pointing out that it is a work of fiction. Others have piled in, including broadcaster and royal biographer Jonathan Dimbleby who floridly branded The Crown “nonsense on stilts”, a sentiment shared with Sir John Major, who is depicted in the series (by Johnny Lee Miller) as the recipient of Charles’ suggestion that his mother should step down. The former prime minister has denied that any such event happened and branded the show “damaging and malicious fiction”.

Picture: Netflix

Sir Jonathan Pryce, who plays Prince Philip in the new series, has some sympathy for Major’s view insofar as he gets the sensitivity. But Pryce also pointed out that, after four series, the audience knows what it is watching. Netflix itself has also defended its show, saying: “it is a fictional dramatisation, imagining what could have happened behind closed doors during a significant decade for the royal family - one that has been scrutinised and well-documented by journalists, biographers and historians. It’s a fair point. And, of course, no one’s forcing anyone to watch it. The timing, though, of the new series - scheduled a long time ago - is unfortunate, coming so soon after the extended period of mourning for the Queen. Plus, there is more revelatory strife to come if and when Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir comes out next year.

This year’s jubilee and then the Queen’s death compressed into a matter of weeks a sense of national unity about monarchy. It even appeared, briefly, to unite the Royal Family itself (Prince Andrew’s ostracising not withstanding). Whether it wants it or not, the global fascination with this venerable institution will continue, so it’s no surprise that a Californian-based streaming service is carrying on regardless. From their point of view, the royals are box office. 25 years after Diana’s passing, the media’s obsession that ultimately contributed to her death hasn’t abated, either. Readers of the Daily Mail and Daily Express are still fed a daily diet of inconsequential bilge about the Royal Family, peddled in the belief that they are satisfying a national fixation. 

Now, the preoccupation that plagued Diana has been conferred onto her youngest son, admittedly the result of his own actions, but with a tone decidedly more sinister than any of the reporting about his mother. Worst of all is the Mail’s obsession with Harry and Meghan. Relentlessly, every single day there is something new about one or both of them, usually in the form of viperously speculative ‘news’ or gobshite commentary from psychopathically possessed writers like Dan Wootton. It’s notable that Harry’s brother William gets none of this. By contrast, the new Prince and Princess of Wales appear to live a model royal life. Tell me there isn’t an agenda going on there.

Which, I’ll admit, makes my acceptance of The Crown as entertainment somewhat contradictory. It’s clearly not a documentary, but nor is it a fabrication, either. Somewhere in between. Executive producer Peter Morgan knows that, but he is probably more aware than most that his sixth and final season will walk a tightrope in bringing the story up to, it is believed, Diana’s death which, contrary to some reports, hasn’t been recreated. The show is not expected to continue any further beyond that time. 

Inadvertently, the princess’s death - still believed to be caused by moped-borne paparazzo chasing her Mercedes through the Pont de l’Alma tunnel - set in train the much needed modernisation of the Royal Family. But also highlighted how detached the monarchy had become. It’s a theme The Crown develops from the outset in Series 5, which opens with the Queen contemplating the dilapidated state of her beloved Royal Yacht Britannia, a metaphor for the institution itself. But at a later point in the series, Diana’s own plight, and increased displacement in the family, is brought to the fore, with the princess bearing her soul to the now-disgraced Martin Bashir in that controversial Panorama interview. The Crown adds a theatrical menace to the encounter, with Bashir telling Diana to “Trust no-one” (an unintended nod, I’m sure, to The X-Files’ Gillian Anderson who hammed it up as Margaret Thatcher in Series Four). 

32-year-old Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki has the incredible weight on her shoulders of playing Diana, perhaps more so than any other ‘character’ in the series. Recreating the most photographed woman in the world in the 80s and 90s, and not just a visual impersonation with the right wig and the doe-eyes is, though only a small part of being Diana. Debicki has to expose, fully, Diana’s numerous vulnerabilities. Of the criticism of The Crown’s quasi-fictional depiction of royal life, the actress recently told The Guardian: “I understand what the show is and what it’s trying to do. I also understand the reaction to it. I think this is a period of time that’s been told many times over and will continue to be told.” She maintains that the show’s producers have applied care and respect to tell the story, but emphasises the point that “it is, clearly, fictional.” 

Well, yes, but only up to a point.

Goodman in a storm: an epic television journey

Picture: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

So that was Better Call Saul. Six captivating seasons of television charting the back story of shady lawyer Jimmy McGill and his metamorphosis into even shadier lawyer Saul Goodman (and, then, apparently unassuming Omaha, Nebraska, Cinnabon branch manager, Gene Takovic). Goodman (“It’s all good, man!”) was only meant to be a sub-character in Breaking Bad, introduced in its second season for a four-episode run, only to be developed into a more pivotal character in the universe and then, over the last seven years, the focus of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s brilliantly written, intelligently directed, utterly compelling series. 

Much of the show’s strength has been drawn from Bob Odenkirk’s performances as the serial scammer McGill/Goodman/Takovic, an enlarged version of the exaggerated lawyers you see advertising on American local TV (“Been in a car crash? Then I’m the guy for you! Let ME fight your corner!”), making him protagonist of a wider landscape of Mexican drug gangs in and around Albuquerque, the thread running through both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. 

To some extent, Saul has been about plugging gaps in the Breaking Bad universe, filling in the back story of how McGill became Goodman, and thus became mixed up in the cartel that turned high school chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) into the drug kingpin Heisenberg. Saul, however, has never been about tying up loose ends, instead presenting something of a Bonnie & Clyde love story between McGill and fellow lawyer Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), as they engage in an ever-increasing spiral of capers which eventually end in tragedies and tragic separation.

Vince Gilligan (middle) with Bob Odenirk (right) and Michael McKean as Chuck McGill (left)
Picture: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

Common to both Breaking Bad and Saul are moments of subtle comedy mixed with arch violence, at perverse odds with the murky nature of plotlines, such as Jonathan Banks’ Mike Ehrmantraut - the cynical ex-cop-turned enforcer for fried chicken supremo/meth magnate Gus Fring - challenging Odenkirk for the wriest lines, and for a good half of Saul’s sixth season Tony Dalton as the Dick Dastardly-esque moustache-twirling smiling psycho Lalo Salamanca, easily one of the finest small screen villains I’ve seen in years. 

“When we first started concocting the idea of doing a spinoff, we literally thought it’d be a half-hour show,” Gilligan recently told Rolling Stone. “It’d be something akin to Dr Katz [animated Comedy Central sitcom from the late ’90s] where it’s basically Saul Goodman in his crazy office with the styrofoam columns and he’s visited every week by a different stand-up comic. It was basically, I guess, legal problems. We talked about that for a day or two. And then Peter Gould and I realised, we don’t know anything about the half-hour idiom. And then we thought, okay, well, so it’s an hour … but it’s going to be a really funny hour. I said, ‘Breaking Bad is about 25-percent humour, 75-percent drama and maybe this will be the reverse of that.’ Well this thing [Saul], especially in Season Four, is every bit as dramatic as Breaking Bad ever was. I just didn’t see any of that coming. I didn’t know how good it would all be. I really didn’t.

Throw in, then, large dollops of irony, the consistently oblique opening sequences to each episode [such as the brilliant Point & Shoot, which begins with the Pacific dreamily washing over a beach, a lone black shoe bobbing in the brine, and followed by a tracking shot that leads to an abandoned car - a future flashback to Ehrmantraut’s deception of how the murdered Hamlin’s body was never found). Add to that exquisite cinematography and smartly unpredictable direction, and Saul will make an immediate entry into the great pantheon of formidable TV series that have enthralled us over the last decade or two. 

Saul’s final season, spread out over 13 episodes (with a mid-season break caused by Odenkirk’s absence from filming due to an on-set heart attack), took arcing narrative to a new level of sophistication and creative licence. Just as Breaking Bad charted White’s transition to Heisenberg, Saul charted McGill’s less linear path from Chicago con artist to his reinvention as Goodman, and then - cleverly shot in black and white - eventual denouement as Takovic (presumably living a new life in Nebraska away from the murderous events in Albuquerque but finding the temptation to scam too much to let go, leading - in last night’s finale - to his past catching up with him). 

It is not altogether, a feelgood end. There is a hint of mild redemption, as McGill settles in for an 86-year stretch at an extreme federal prison in Montrose, Colorado, where fellow hardcore inmates respect him for his ‘Better Call Saul!’ TV ad persona. There is even something of a reconciliation between Jimmy and the now estranged Kim, long after their scamming and its intersection with Lalo Salamanca led to the violent death of smarmy lawyer Howard Hamlin and indeed Salamanca himself.

Picture: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

The received wisdom is that we have been - and still are - in a golden age of television. Better Call Saul, and Breaking Bad are both entries in a library of shows that have, with each iteration, challenged the conventions and formulas that, in particular, American-made network television shows took during my childhood. The arrival of, first, the cable channels and then, more recently, the streamers threw off the shackles of network regulation. An hour of television suddenly became an hour of cinematic television. The Sopranos (still for me the greatest television show of all time) in 1999 can lay claim to being the catalyst, leading to shows like The Wire, Mad Men, Homeland, Game Of Thrones and almost every other ‘appointment’ drama you’ve ever been recommended. Even network shows, like House or Grey’s Anatomy benefitted from the narrative-driven approach that the cable and streaming series generated.

I know all of these examples are American, and there have been plenty of similarly intelligently-written series elsewhere (from acclaimed Scandi-dramas to Line Of Duty), but the US has cornered the market for event programming to schedule your life around, rather than simply have on. You could say, I know, that few of these shows were based on new concepts: there was The Godfather before The Sopranos, political dramas before The West Wing and Hill Street Blues before The Wire, but none were allowed the space and creative licence to explore the plots and themes that they pursued, challenging ‘cookie cutter’ depictions of nuclear families, urban living, social behaviour or the criminal underworld.

Arguably, though, the biggest strength of all of them - and Better Call Saul has been the prime example - is pace. Like its ‘sequel’ Breaking Bad, Saul was deliberately slow to get cooking. Gilligan and Gould were in no rush to establish Jimmy McGill as the vengeful rogue, slowly building his ascent to become Saul Goodman by creating a long-form rivalry with slick lawyer Howard Hamlin (whose own arc crossed streams with Lalo’s in tragic circumstances in this final season), leaving victims in his wake, such as his own brother Chuck and eventual wife Kim. Saul doesn’t ask for our view on the morality of it all, much as The Sopranos didn’t ask for our opinion on the casual violence and the almost organised infidelity of the principle characters. And so, McGill cons and fleeces his way through scam after scam, becoming Goodman and latterly Takovic. None of this happened overnight. And it was better for it.

Tony Dalton as Lalo Salamanca
Picture: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

The quality is courage: The Sopranos wasn’t afraid to bump off Soprano crew stalwart Salvatore ‘Big Pussy’ Bonpensiero in just the second series and there have been similar ‘Well that just happened…!’ moments in all of the shows it sired, from Idris Elba’s Stringer Bell in The Wire to Bryan Cranston’s Walter White in Breaking Bad itself). Even in Better Call Saul, Lalo met his end midway through this final series, despite appearing to be set up as chief antagonist for its entire length. That is the brilliance of this sort of television. Predictability just won’t cut it.

Seinfeld proved, too, that you could fill a half hour with nothing at all, as long as it was witty. Gilligan and Gould have done something similar with their two series set, more or less, in the fairly uninspiring New Mexico city of Albuquerque. Who else could make five minutes of McGill/Goodman bouncing a tennis ball off his office wall while he contemplates his own divorce, riotously entertaining? In an industry - especially the American television industry - where every second of airtime has to count, less can definitely mean more.

Of course, some of the credit for this must go to the non-linear channels like HBO, Netflix, AppleTV, Disney Plus, AMC and others that now dominate our viewing choices. They’ve enabled the proliferation of television length, cinema-scale creativity, some of which is attracting some of the most talented directors in the industry. Disney’s acquisition of the Star Wars universe, with spinoffs like The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi, may not have won over all of the fanboys, but they’ve literally chopped up a cinema product and made it bingeworthy telly. 

Better Call Saul’s ending will probably end the Breaking Bad universe. Gilligan says they’ve had other ideas, but his focus now will be on something completely new. “It’s a lot of pressure. It’s very scary. A lot of sweaty palms. A lot of sleepless nights,”, Gilligans’s creative partner, Peter Gould said of Saul’s ending during a Television Critics Association presentation. “I think, ‘Who are we going to please?’ I think we know. I think those of us on the show are very happy with where it ended. I hope everybody else agrees.”. 

Over the course of 62 episodes of Breaking Bad, 63 episodes of Saul, and the post-Breaking Bad film El Camino, Gilligan (who previously worked on The X Files) and Gould have sealed themselves firmly in the great library of epic television shows. While they haven’t reinvented the medium, they’ve injected something of wit and intelligence to the hour-long format. One day, I’ve promised myself to rewatch The Sopranos in its entirety. I can see these entertaining tales of morally reprehensible behaviour in Albuquerque getting another airing as well. I’d just need to find ten uninterrupted days to binge my way through all of it.

Picture: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

One will make up one’s own mind, thank you

Picture: Netflix

You would have thought - given the global pandemic - that Her Majesty's Government would have a little less time on their hands to get involved in things that really don't, frankly, need their involvement. But that hasn’t stopped Oliver Dowden, the squeaky-voiced Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, who is also a Cabinet minister, from calling on The Crown to carry a ‘health warning’ to make clear that the series is a fictionalised account of life within the House of Windsor.

No sooner had I posted here on Saturday about how The Crown is just a glorious dramatisation of supposed real events and, in essence, is largely a posh version of Dallas or Dynasty, than Dowden told the Mail On Sunday (who else?): “I fear a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact”, adding that while the show was a “beautifully produced work of fiction”, it “should be very clear at the beginning it is just that”. He is planning to write to Neflix to express his concerns further. Environment secretary George Eustice - this morning’s government stooge on the breakfast shows - even added to Dowden’s remarks when asked about them by Sky’s Kay Burley: “It is a very good drama, but it is a drama,” he said, adding that while the show was “clearly based on true events in our recent history” it was clear that it contained “colourful depictions” based on fact. While not the most explicit endorsement of his colleague’s comments, it was starting to sound like a government line. That in itself is a worry. Why should any minister have a view about something so obviously entertainment, while elsewhere there's a deadly virus on the loose and an economic meltdown and rising unemployment resulting from it? It wouldn't have anything to do with a backbench revolt over the tiering system, would it?

Picture: Netflix

If, though, The Crown is, now, a matter of highest importance for HMG, I strongly suggest that Dowden drops the BBC a note asking them to make clear that EastEnders isn’t a fly-on-the-wall series about a Cockerney community in working class London. And while he's at it, a missive should be on its way to ITV asking it to make clear that Emmerdale isn’t about real farming folk. Perhaps, too, an e-mail to Disney to have them clarify that The Mandalorian is, in fact, a drama about a bounty hunter in a galaxy far, far away, and not a hard-hitting documentary about life five years after the end of the facist Galactic Empire in Return Of The Jedi. Which also wasn’t real.

Inevitably, Twitter has piled on. “The Culture Secretary’s ‘intervention’ over The Crown is the funniest thing I've heard in ages,” said one tweet. “Netflix already tells people that The Crown is fiction. It’s billed as a drama. Those people in it are actors. I know! Blows your mind,” said another. One tweet ranted: “I just don’t know where to start with Oliver Dowden using his full powers of headed notepaper to demand Netflix proclaim The Crown is fiction, but maybe a trip round the back of the flat screen to check there aren’t little people living there.”

Understandably, those involved in The Crown have been defending the latest season which, unlike the first three, seems to be closer to contemporary sensitivities because it focuses on a period of history played out in the media unlike any before it. That aside, Series 4 is no different to Series 1-3. Showrunner Peter Morgan has happily described its fictionalised account of real-life events as a "constant push-pull" between research and drama. Josh O'Connor, who plays Prince Charles in the latest run, told the BBC: "Sometimes people will want to believe this is what happened. It's always worth checking in and remembering that we're actors, we're not real and it's not a real story.” 

This hasn’t stopped former royal correspondents from piling in: Dickie Arbiter, the onetime Independent Radio News royal correspondent who became the Buckingham Palace press secretary, has branded the show’s fourth series a “hatchet job” on both Charles and Diana, whose ill-fated marriage forms the series' core theme, along with the Thatcher premiership. Its depiction of C&D's travails stretched “dramatic licence to the extreme”, Arbiter has said. Even ex-BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond has said she feared some viewers might treat the show "as a documentary".

The real worry, for me, is who the likes of Dowden (right) are trying to address with these comments. There’s an implied suggestion that some Netflix viewers are stupid, because they’ve also watched Selling Sunset and The Tiger King (as have I, and never once mistook them for fiction). Worse was that Dowden enraged the Mail On Sunday which, together with its rival the Daily Express, maintains a scary, mad-person-wearing-head-to-toe-Union-Jack obsession with the royals and, even 23 years after her death, Diana. “Viewers of this series,” it thundered yesterday, in total agreement with Dowden, “should never be in any doubt that what they are seeing is dramatic invention by Left-wing persons who do not in fact much like the institution or the family they pretend to portray.” 

Er, right. Let me refer the right-honourable gentleman to my remarks earlier in this post about EastEnders, Emmerdale and the Star Wars universe. They’re not all that deferential to the institutions they portray, either, but no-one’s going to think that there’s a London borough called Walford, and Phil Mitchell has been able to last 30 years as its resident alcoholic thug.  

Games of thrones: The Crown and other guilty pleasures

Picture: Netflix

So, it’s happened. I’m embracing pop culture in a manner I hadn’t previously thought I would. Full disclosure - I recently bought Kylie Minogue’s new album, DISCO, on the strength of reviews, and absolutely love it. Likewise, I ordered Paloma Faith’s new release Infinite Things purely because of her performing the corking breakout single Gold on The Jonathan Ross Show. Both purchases were made ‘on behalf’ of my girlfriend as gifts to her, but I've cast a sneaky ear to both quite shamelessly. More than once. Similarly, Steps were on BBC Breakfast yesterday morning doing their new single, and I actually quite liked it. Yes. Steps. WTAF? 

The trouble is that recent months have levelled many things up. We’ve craved comfort. My television consumption has changed out of all recognition, though this is partly to do with moving in with a partner and her teenage daughters back in February, shortly before The Plague descended. In stark comparison to my single life, watching repeats of ancient Mock The Week episodes and Cop Car Workshop marathons on Dave, I have now been introduced to Bakeoff, Masterchef, Gogglebox and something quite queasy called Naked Attraction. It’s not that I have an aversion to reality, it’s just that I’ve always preferred escape. Living on my own, and assuming Dave wasn’t showing an evening of old Would I Lie To You? episodes, I’d dip into the Bond movie collection, or something of that ilk. Now, amid my new family life, we’ve blown through Selling Sunset and The Tiger King, shows I wouldn’t have hitherto watched in a thousand years based on synopsis alone. Similarly, BBC1’s engrossing Ambulance fly-on-the-wall series about London's emergency responders would have been too much reality. But watched it we did. Every single episode. And it was good.

As the pandemic dragged through the months, and a warm spring begat a hot summer before sinking into a wet autumn, with lockdown coming, going, and returning once more, we have, as a nation, sought comfort in our tellyboxes. We have consumed things not out of intellectual fulfilment, but not out of mindless amusement either. Well, not all the time. I have, though, surprised myself with what I’ve actually been happy to indulge. Case in point: The Crown. I normally find biopics about people with whom I’m familiar uncomfortable, largely because I’m somewhat retentive and pick holes in any attempt to appropriate real individuals I somewhat know about. Thus, I struggled with Bohemian Rhapsody because I knew most of the stories already and didn’t see the need for actors - as good as Rami Malek was as Freddie Mercury - retelling them. And from the same director (Dexter Fletcher), Eddie The Eagle gave a mildly amusing account of Edwards’ story, although Rocketman at least sought to get under Elton John’s skin. But I still can’t help sitting there going “That wouldn’t have been like that!” or “He wouldn’t have said that!”, and similar such pedantry. Actually, all of this applies to just about every and any rock biopic you care to mention (and the less said about the Bowie effort, Stardust, the better...).

The Crown, on the other hand, has presented a very different dilemma. The British royal family are, arguably, one of the world’s most written about, scrutinised and gossiped over institutions. Even if you’re not particularly interested in royalty, you will have found it hard to avoid them. If you’re British, Her Maj the Q is on the front of every stamp and the back of every coin. And at age 94 not-out, Elizabeth II has transcended generations since she became sovereign at the age of 25. Her extended family, for good or for bad, remains the most photographed on the planet. There’s little we don’t know about the royals, and what we don’t gets confected by the press and so-called royal watchers as supposed fact. 

So, quite what Peter Morgan’s dramatisation of the Queen’s reign opens up is subject to question. High question. And yet the sumptuous Netflix series has been the ultimate lockdown comfort food. You know Princess Anne would never call her elder brother “Eeyore” out of mockery in real life, as she does in one episode, but it's a delicious thought (actually, the princess recently admitted in a TV interview for her 70th birthday that she had watched early episodes of The Crown and found them "quite interesting", though had not seen any more recent. That notwithstanding, she's the only royal known to have seen any of the series, a reminder that Anne has probably been the coolest of the Queen's offspring, though the competitive field for that title is not too broad...).

I have been in Prince Charles’ company on two occasions: in the first - for a speech he gave at Clarence House on climate change - he was exactly as you’ve seen him on television, sharing his thoughts on one of his genuine passions. The humour was light and somewhat contrived, and apart from being heir to the throne, he could have been any corporate executive doing a thing about a thing. 

The second occasion was at the COP-15 environment conference in Copenhagen, at which, as part of a delegation from a corporate sponsor of one of the PoW's worthy initiatives, I stood behind two of my then-company’s middle managers as they jostled for prominence as Charles - accompanied by a vast entourage (lackeys, media people and even his own camera crew) passed along a line, making vacuous small talk. I felt sympathy for him. The price of progressing his pet causes is a daily round of palm-greasing with people he wouldn’t otherwise have time for, while dropping carefully timed bon mots for mild amusement. On neither occasion did I find Charles morose or eccentric, or any of the other barbs aimed at him. But, then, these brief encounters hardly make me an authority.

This raises questions about how much The Crown has faithfully documented the House of Windsor’s dysfunctions over the last 70-odd years, or whether the show is simply a posh version of Dallas or Dynasty (which could have been its alternative title, now I think of it). The truth probably lies somewhere between the two. We have just burned through Series 4 with unbridled enthusiasm, almost to the point of addiction at squeezing in another before bedtime (how box sets should be consumed). After the first two seasons chronicled Elizabeth’s accession and adjustment to becoming sovereign so young, and in a post-war empire, too, with all its political, social and cultural upheavals, the third gave more prominence to the young Charles trying to find his way in the world against the backdrop of Britain’s place in the 1960s and 1970s. Series 4, however, has been the most anticipated so far, ever since Series 3 ended with the mouthwatering prospect of what the next would tackle. 

Firstly, the fourth season has entered the era my age group grew up in, the 1980s, and secondly, it was when the media landscape changed out of all recognition. The Fourth Estate became a different beast entirely in the 1980s: a more deferential press towards the establishment gave way to a more oikish press (no coincidence that a republican Australian owned The Sun, News Of The World, the now defunct Today and even The Times stable). This intertwines, in alternative waves, with the two core elements of The Crown’s fourth season: the marriage of Charles and Diana, and the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. 

I couldn’t ever say I’ve been that bothered about the royals. I’ve got nothing against them and quite like their presence in the national fabric, but I recall the saga of Charles and Diana, played out in the press (and not just the tabloids, either…) for what seemed like the entire decade, as tiresome. Equally, I would happily confess a loathing of Thatcher, no matter what the perceived conclusions might be of her tenure at No.10. I was at secondary school for most of her time in office (she was elected just after I took - unsuccessfully - my 11-plus), and my view of her was coloured, I’ll admit, by the influence of proto-typical, Lada-driving lefty teachers. The Crown’s depiction of her divisiveness is framed through background themes like South Africa, the Falklands War and the miners' strike. Even social injustices, vicariously through the episode of royal intruder Michael Fagan, supposedly discussing them with HRHtQ in her bedroom, brought back many raw memories from my teenage years, and a reminder that the 1980s weren’t all puffball skirts and party balloons on Top Of The Pops. But, then again, the '80s were the decade that defined me: they were the years of Live Aid, of me really discovering music and then getting to write about it for a living, including a spell for Smash Hits, one of the publishing phenomena of the pre-Internet age. I was 12 when the 1980s began, 22 when they ended, a child at the outset, a working man when they came to a close, and already in the thick of corporate politics with a job at Sky TV, having passed my O-levels and comprehensively failed my A-levels somewhere along the way.

Picture: Netflix

The biggest problem with dramatisations of real events is always the casting, and The Crown has been no different on occasion. That said, Olivia Coleman and Tobias Menzies have been superb as the sovereign and her consort, Philip, in the third and fourth seasons, and Gillian Anderson, despite an early tendency to sound more like Steve Nallon’s Spitting Image delivery, has been brilliant. In some respects, taking on Thatcher is one of the more challenging roles Anderson could have accepted. Get it wrong, and it’s hopeless parody; get it right, and you open up all the old wounds again. However, Thatcher shares the limelight of Series 4 with the doomed marriage of Princess Charles and Princess Diana, and I can imagine showrunner Peter Morgan took on the challenge of recreating that with some glee. As much as it evolved into a bubbling sea of acrimonious media froth, with Diana’s tragic adult life played out from the announcement of her engagement until her death in a Paris tunnel just 16 years later, The Crown’s depiction of the near-Shakespearian tragedy of a troubled heir to the throne unable to marry the married woman he actually loved, but instead being virtually forced into marriage with a sweet young Sloane Ranger from landed stock, is as engrossing as it was genuinely sad. Charles’ portrayal by Josh O'Connor does stray into pantomime villainy, and Morgan hasn’t held back from positioning the plant-whispering prince as an embittered control freak. Sadly, this has led to a social media backlash against the real Charles and Camilla. For this season only, Emma Corrin has played Diana with aplomb, not only getting the 'People's Princess' and her dewy-eyed, head-tilted coquettishness, but projecting her vulnerability and isolation and, ultimately, how she was so utterly a square peg in a round hole within Clan Windsor.

There is, of course, much to criticise The Crown for its take on real events. Since Series 4 was released two weeks ago, newspaper columnists and the twittersphere alike have been frothing at the alleged inaccuracies. Some have been valid. No, Lord Mountbatten didn’t write to Charles, on the day he was blown up by the IRA, urging him to do his duty and find “some sweet and innocent, well-tempered girl with no past” to settle down with; no, Margaret Thatcher and husband Dennis were not put through a purgatorial test of etiquette on their first visit to Balmoral in 1979; and, no, Diana wasn’t put through a horrendous rite of passage, early on, at a mob gathering at Buckingham Palace, where Princess Margaret (played not entirely convincingly by Helena Bonham-Carter) is depicted as castigating the novice princess for getting her curtseys wrong (“Spiteful rubbish,” said the Daily Mail). There are many more acts of clear dramatic licence that have brought former courtiers and royal biographers out of the woodwork, as well as those with a more genuine, personal connection.

Picture: Netflix

To state the bleeding obvious, any misconception that The Crown is a documentary should have been brushed away long before people pressed the Netflix button. If you step back from the reality that it depicts a family we all think we know, and filter out the fact that none of us, not even those who may have fleetingly been in the company of an actual royal, have any actual knowledge of what they’re really like, sat around the dining tables and state rooms of their castles and stately homes. But who cares. Who cares if the plot lines are Albert Square transported to Buckingham Palace ("GIT AHT OF MY PALACE!!!) or Coronation Street recreated at Balmoral. It’s engrossing stuff. Yes, a pile of cheese, but as cheese is one of the few things my dietary requirements can tolerate these days, I’ve lapped up every episode so far, and am actually getting quite impatient for seasons five and six (there will be no more after that) to get a move on. 

We’ve spent the better part of the last nine months in lockdown with our own families, ultra-dysfunctional or not, so virtually eavesdropping on a confected version of, arguably the most dysfunctional dynasty on the planet has been a richly delicious guilty pleasure. And I appear to be craving more. 

Pace yourself - this thing's not over yet

Picture: Twitter/BetterCaulSaul/AMC

There have been two stark reminders this week that we're in it for the long run with this pandemic. Firstly, I finally received a letter from my GP warning me to "stay at home at all times and avoid all face-to-face contact for at least 12 weeks" owing to rather foolishly having an underlying health condition. This, I thought, was somewhat curious as we are now in Week 4 of the lockdown, and I'd received a text message from the NHS three weeks ago today warning me, then, to stay at home for “at least” 12 weeks. So, am I now confined to barracks for 12 or is it 15 weeks? And then, if I heard Chris Whitty, the government's chief medical adviser, correctly this week, I might be here for even longer, like The Count of Monte Cristo or Rapunzel, after he alarmingly stated that no one's getting out until they find a cure, or a vaccine, or the economy collapses and it's the Zombie Apocalypse for real. Something like that.

A staple of the media over the last few weeks has been reporting on how people are (or not) coping with the lockdown. I'm not going to be flippant, and pretend that there aren't families in appalling conditions, children sharing bedrooms in cramped flats, and a serge in domestic violence; I'm also not going to believe that everyone in the UK can simply ride this thing out over the summer by setting up permanent station in their gardens, as it's a myth to believe that we all have one in this green and pleasant land. We do, however, all have access to television, which has become a universal panacea. It's no surprise, then, that box sets and streaming services are being chewed through at a rate of knots. Even I have started watching Masterchef and Bake Off, the kind of thing I'd ordinarily swerve, for want of something feelgood. Travel shows, too, have provided the escapism we've been denied by the lockdown (Sir Tony Robinson taking a train from Seattle to Alaska the other night was strangely liberating, despite being largely about the actor sitting inside a metal tube for hundreds of miles at a time). And there was Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, the batshit-mad story of the batshit-mad Joe Exotic, his big cat zoo in Oklahoma and his allegedly murderous obsession with conservationist Carole Baskin. What could have been easily condensed into a single hour (as Louis Theroux had done previously) was brilliantly strung out into seven, somewhat individually themed episodes. These could also have been rationed but, in most people's cases, were binge-viewed in three, two or even single sittings. Given the bizarre story that played out, with equally bizarre players, it was hardly family lockdown material, but there we were - all of us - craving another episode after each dose, even when it was clearly getting late.

Since it’s premiere on 20th March Tiger King has been watched by more than 64 million households (Netflix’s metric) and has become a classic example of word of mouth cultural encroachment. We watched it because “everyone” was talking about it. We weren’t disappointed. Every day there's another recommendation on Facebook, be it Stranger Things, Ozark or Love Is Blind, or from these shores, the BBC’s Killing Eve (an episode of which was filmed not 100 yards from the kitchen table at which I write this). No wonder Netflix has added almost 16 million new accounts in the first three months of the year (almost double the number of new sign-ups for the final months of 2019). Even with new productions on hiatus, Netflix promises that it won't be running out of content any time yet.

One of its jewels, and one it was smart to bet on from the outset, is Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad prequel which, it is frequently debated, has been even better than the show from which it spawned. This week its ten-episode fifth season drew to a stunning conclusion, brilliantly setting itself up for a sixth and final run, though no one quite knows when that will appear. Showrunners Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould were aiming for a season a year, but the lockdown in California has meant that production is on hiatus, although it has provided time to work on the new scripts. If you’ve not watched the final episode of Season 5, I won’t spoil it here, but like the previous seasons, 5 has been a delicious arc, continuing the metamorphosis of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman, the shyster lawyer of Breaking Bad (“It’s all good, man”), laying a few seeds that flower in the original series and even dropping a few plot lines that have left devotees of both shows wondering where and when the link will be made.

Picture: AMC television

But, unlike the much-binged Tiger King, Saul has been drip-fed to us, week-by-week, an old-fashioned approach, perhaps, but equally as effective as cliffhangers from old when the following week’s episode couldn’t come soon enough. This weekly progression has helped build not just a story curve but the season’s character curve, too. There have been standout performances from Bob Odenkirk as McGill/Goodman, as he finds himself deeper and deeper into the murky world of Albuquerque’s criminal underworld. Goodman was only ever meant to be a minor character in Breaking Bad, but with each new season of Saul, Gilligan and Gould have mined an even richer seam of ambition - and paranoia - providing obvious and not so obvious links and bridges to what we know of his future; Rhea Seehorn as his romantic partner and career-minded lawyer who, herself, starts to display a more nefarious side towards the end of the season, just as Walter White’s wife Skyler became more embroiled in the affairs of his alter-ego, ‘Heisenberg’; and the enigmatic Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut, the gnarled ex-cop (and, possibly, ex-special forces operative) doing the dirty work for nefarious drug emperor Gus Fring; and the season’s standout character, Lalo Salamanca, played with glorious, moustache-twirling, vintage villainy by Tony Dalton.

“Just IMAGINE when Better Call Saul was announced...the notion of suggesting it’d be half as remarkable as Breaking Bad was. You’d have been immediately ripped on & discredited. It’s all I see now - that it equals it, if not surpasses it. Astronomical odds of that happening.” So wrote the very excellent Canadian radio presenter Greg Brady in a tweet on Tuesday. I mention this as A) I follow Greg (and occasionally you can hear him on BBC 5 Live’s always entertaining Fighting Talk) and he follows me, and B) I couldn’t have summed up Better Call Saul better myself. That’s almost all there is to be said. With each new season, the bar has crept ever higher. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul have rightfully joined the ranks of the great entries in the so-called 'golden age of television', that period over the last couple of decades when The Sopranos, The Wire, Band Of Brothers, 24 and Homeland managed to transcend formulaic series television and become what became known as “appointment TV”, epic, cinematic television. America hasn’t had the monopoly on this, of course, as the likes of Line Of Duty, Killing Eve and, most recently, The Nest have demonstrated. But many of these examples are of shows which conform to a conventional linearity.

Picture: AMC

Better Call Saul - even more than Breaking Bad - has frequently demonstrated none of it. Moreover, Gilligan, in particular, has presided over two series with an identical love of quirky cinematography. If you thought some of the camera angles in the original Batman TV series in the 1960s were askew, some of the shot framing and scene-teeing in Saul, in particular, has been exquisite. The precedent was set in Breaking Bad, of course, with the opening episode commencing with Walt White, wearing white underpants and a gas mask, speeding off-road in the New Mexico desert in his cookshop 'RV'. All this before we had any clue as to who he was, what he was or why he was out there. Speed forward (or back), to the premiere episode of Better Call Saul, and the opening sequence begins with a individual who looks a lot like Saul living in stark anonymity in Nebraska, running a shopping mall Cinnabon kiosk, and spending his evenings replaying video cassettes of Saul Goodman TV commercials. All in black and white with hardly a word uttered. Here's Gilligan’s trademark: quirksome and often irony-laden, using idiosyncratic tracking shots or even something as simple as the reflection of an SUV in a puddle to build menace, curiosity and fear in equal measure, rather than simply resort to ‘establishing shots’ of landscapes which, while pretty, give little for the narrative to follow.

The Sopranos did similar things, with music frequently applied to underline Tony Soprano’s baby boomer, middle-aged dadness, an important reminder that he wasn’t just a ruthless capo. Both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul have traded off the fact that New Mexico is not like anywhere else in the American south, and that Albuquerque is not like any other southern desert city. Even if the criminality theme fits into any reflection of modern America, and urban America in particular, the fact that Gilligan’s shows are not set in the usual locations, like Los Angeles or New York, merely adds to the fact that we’re simply watching something else entirely. It’ll be truly interesting to see where Saul - now he has more or less become Vader to Jimmy McGill’s Annakin - takes us in the final season. Whenever that materialises...

Can't wait for Season 21 of The Crown!

Picture: Instagram/@sussexroyal

Finally, we plunged in. After two complete seasons of the media raving about The Crown, with even me living down the road from the Old Naval College in Greenwich (where exterior scenes of Buckingham Palace for it were filmed), my girlfriend and I started bingeing the Netflix series over Christmas. As a battle-hardened veteran of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad box sets, I’ve always been somewhat averse to soapy shows that might appeal more to Hello! readers rather than gritty drama. Even more, I've always been wary of dramatisations of contemporary stories, especially involving actors playing real people who are still alive (they never seem to get the casting right). On top of this, most previous attempts at portraying the royals in film and television have invariably been awful, Helen Mirren in The Queen being a noted exception.

But in we went - and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what we’ve watched so far. The casting has been almost exclusively terrific (standout performances by Claire Foy as the younger Queen Elizabeth and John Lithgow mesmerising as Winston Churchill), but more importantly, there has been less of a soap opera about it all and more an insightful depiction of British and global history in the second half of the 20th century. Episodes in the first two seasons have covered the Second World War, Suez, the Kennedy assassination, the complexities of royal heritage and duty, Churchill’s demise and the prescient scramble to succeed him within the Tory party, and even the suggested Nazi associations of the Duke of Windsor, the abdicated king. Like The Sopranos - and with clear parallels to an established family structure being challenged by modernity and its own moral ambiguities - The Crown has thus far been rip-roaring entertainment and thoroughly addictive. So, given last night’s blockbuster news that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex - Harry and Meghan, to you and me - are to "step back as 'senior' members of the Royal Family" and "work to become financially independent", you wonder how, in future seasons of The Crown, the royal soap opera that has periodically spilled into public life over the last 30 years will be portrayed by the show.

I don’t wish to be flippant. Every family has its rifts, and the Royal Family - while essentially being also a ‘firm’ - is not immune to them. As The Crown has depicted (and, so I’m informed, faithfully), the frustrations Prince Philip had as royal consort and Princess Margaret endured as the Queen’s sole sibling are possibly no different to those Harry and Meghan have now brought to a head. I’m no staunch royalist, but then again, I have no strong feelings about the royal family’s existence. For the most part, they’re good for the nation. It's not defensive PR spin to say that the royals contribute positively to the British tourist economy - you only have to listen to the gushing coming from coachloads of Chinese tourists as they press their noses up to the railings of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle - even if there is an increasing sense of republican scorn (on Twitter, obviously, but also in the readers' comments of the discreetly anti-royal Mail Online). Here, Harry and Meghan have run themselves into trouble. Flying on private jets while preaching about climate change is downright provocative, making the flak they're now facing over living rent-free in Frogmore Cottage (for now) which was renovated at a cost to the taxpayer of £2.4 million, understandable.

However, their very public and, it would appear, premature, flounce from the Royal Family has been coming. Harry has never been a fan of media scrutiny, both because it cost him his mother but also because it encroached on him personally, and by marrying a successful American actress, whose career thrived on publicity, fault lines were increasingly being exposed as he grew further into his 30s, especially with no clear royal role for himself. That the couple chose to spend six weeks out of the spotlight as what has been termed "a break" from royal life, should have been seen as a precursor to last night's announcement, modishly issued via Instagram. Rumours had been circling for a while that they might be considering relocating to Canada, and the sight of the couple on Tuesday visiting Canada House in London to thank the country for its "hospitality" during their Christmas holidays with Meghan's mother should have been a clue as to their mindset. The big shock, however, is that their announcement came without the knowledge of Buckingham Palace. Royal insiders have expressed genuine dismay, suggesting that the Queen herself was blindsided. Perhaps worse, still, not even Prince Charles was aware, a strange situation since you'd have thought his youngest son would have at least floated the plan in advance. The Palace's official statement, carefully written but full of nuance, said that discussions with Harry and Meghan on their decision to step back were "at an early stage" and that: "We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through." Not only a signal that the Sussexes had jumped the gun, but that their cry for freedom was not going to be relieved easily.

These are, then troubling times for the Royal Family. Not quite existential-troubling, but not far off. 2019 was, in the history of royal anni horribiles, a peach: Prince Philip's actual car crash last January was eclipsed by his second son's metaphorical car crash on Newsnight in November; an apparent rift appeared between Princes William and Harry as the latter broke away from the Cambridge's foundation in June; and, then, there have been continuing attacks on the tabloid press by Harry and Meghan suing the Mail On Sunday over the publication of a handwritten letter she had sent her estranged father. As someone who has spent most of his working life in corporate PR, I know that nothing ever happens publically without good reason. It's normally just a good idea to be in full control. For the most part, Buckingham Palace is normally in control. The Crown has faithfully depicted many of these episodes. The Queen's 2019 Christmas speech, accompanied by carefully arranged and deliberately selected pictures of members of her family - but notably sans Harry and Meghan - was no accident. The Sussexes are said to be less than happy about that. And then the release on Instagram of a staged portrait of the Queen, Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince George, was a very clear statement of succession, even with Charles standing on a step and appearing taller than his lanky eldest son (Charles is not tall - I know, I've met him). This is being interpreted as part of the inevitable succession of the crown: Charles is said to be thinking of restructuring the family firm, slimming it down and giving it greater social relevance in the 21st century as one of the last functioning monarchies in the world. That process has already begun, effectively, with Prince Philip officially retiring from royal duties last August at the age of 96, and his second son, Andrew, being retired involuntarily following that Newsnight interview. Harry following suit, "while 'continuing to honour our duty to the Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages'," reduces the First Team squad even further, though this is a little like Chelsea shedding one ageing player, losing another to a failed drug test, and Eden Hazard moving to Real Madrid.

Few can blame Harry and Meghan for wanting a different life for themselves and their son Archie. Harry, in particular, has had to bear the burden of unwanted attention since birth, inflamed by his mother’s death, and then having to endure living in his brother’s shadow as a young adult. His brief tours of duty in Afghanistan may have given him an outlet for fraternal company, but he was merely following royal tradition (his uncle, Andrew, spent the Falklands War piloting Sea King helicopters as decoys for Argentinian Exocet missiles). What gets under the public skin, however, is money. We pay for the royals whether we like them or not. Choosing to just not be one should be something that is discussed, discreetly. No wonder it has caused the Queen "disappointment and hurt", according to sources. Princess Margaret's portrayal as a younger woman in The Crown as a society player struggling to find purpose as the monarch's sister, holds many parallels for Harry today. The press obsession with his mother (which, incredibly, continues today in the UK's mid-market tabloids) has inevitably and tragically informed his view of how the media has treated his own wife. With, now, a baby son in their midst, it would appear that this particular redhead has conformed to stereotype and gone rogue. Good luck to him, I say. It does make the prospect of future episodes of The Crown even more enticing. Just don't expect Meghan to play herself.