Our screens in 2016: How TV looked 10 years ago

Right now, social media apparently cares what we looked like 10 years ago. Many people you know, from your neighbour to your favourite movie star, are posting pictures of themselves looking younger — but often not that much younger. Just like superhero movies who feel the need to reboot their IP every few years or neighbourhood cafes that change their name and playlist every other season, we appear to have developed an incredibly short attention span for nostalgia itself. Yet beware of the rosy-tint of flashbacks, for 2016 was no idyll. It was the year of Brexit, the year of demonetisation, and the year Donald Trump was elected to the Presidency.

A year, in short, where everyone got everything wrong.

Still, 2016 was also the year Netflix and Amazon Prime came to India, so looking back on what we were watching might actually be interesting. In case Instagram were to wonder what this particular space in this particular newspaper looked like back then, well then I must say that it looked anticlimactially the same. I started this column back in 2016, and clearly have since watched far more television shows than are good for me.

As a longtime film critic, I felt a shifting of the tides: streaming television was opening up a flood of content far more unique and interesting and diverse than what movie theatres serve us. It was more to choose from, and entirely ours to choose when to watch and where and with whom. I therefore felt the pressing need to write about shows, from all over the world, more than even films. My first column was an appreciation of Lisa Kudrow’s magnificent series The Comeback (JioHotstar), about an aging sitcom star making a comeback, a show that has, a decade later, announced a new season this year. In this, my 456th column, I remain chuffed for that self-aware showbiz satire.

What happened on our screens in 2016? For me, it was the year I met Fleabag, long before any hot priest came along. Phoebe Waller-Bridge made eye-contact with us while a man ineptly attempted to make out with her, letting us into her life with immediacy and intimacy. I remember watching that first season with my friend Rohini, both of us exhilarated to find a narrative about self-awareness and death and friendship, with its dry yet droll heroine unafraid not only to call a spade a spade, but also to confess that she secretly rather fancied spades. Too special.

This was also the year of Donald Glover’s work of genius Atlanta, where, without explanation, Justin Bieber is played by a young black man. The shapeshifting series about a clueless hero navigating the worlds of rap music and crime and relationships blended the surreal with the melancholy in a way live-action had never dared to, and while it remained unclassifiable — and by its eventual end, uneven — that opening season brought us something too special too describe.

True-crime peaked gloriously with The People v. O.J. Simpson, Ryan Murphy’s all-star courtroom circus where Cuba Gooding Jr. channelled Simpson’s conflicted character, and Sarah Paulson’s Marcia Clark emerged as a tragic titan. The series remains cinematic and masterful and worth learning from, less sensational than most of today’s true-crime hits, but significantly more compelling. Our first glimpse of The Crown's immaculately-tailored lavishness hit like royal opium; Claire Foy's Elizabeth was porcelain poise in post-war penury, with every corseted curtsy showing off England’s elegant entropy. For a while there, like the Empire itself, it felt like it meant something profound, before it bloated into heritage porn.

Sorrentino's The Young Pope brought fascinating irreverence: Jude Law as a vaping Pius XIII, chain-smoking Camels while plotting in the Vatican, a baroque blaspheme that thumbed its nose at the rules with operatic obscenity. Silicon Valley's razor-sharp third season skewered tech bros like seekh-kebabs, and may have, ten years on, inspired many of the AI-spewing billionaires in charge of the world today. And oh, it was the year we got BoJack Horseman Season 3, Episode 4: "Fish Out of Water," Netflix's single best episode of all-time. A fever dream, a silent symphony of anguish. A show known for puns and voice-gags decided to shut up for an episode as the protagonist was literally all at sea, floundering wordlessly underwater and grappling with his heartwrenching emotions. It still slays me. Exquisite.

Ten years isn’t a long time ago. The reason golden age syndrome isn’t just about a golden age anymore is because we ache not for the (bleak) world we had, but for ourselves. Ten years ago we were younger and new lesser and were more entranced by the possibilities. Streaming television opened up our world, and we gratefully, hungrily consumed the best shows in the world — instead of now, when we save them to our bottomless watchlists and end up watching reels instead. Sigh, so many reels.

The world has not changed: Trump is still President, the UK is a circus, and our money is worth less than ever. Yet perhaps we should resolve to make more time to watch what we love. Or else another decade will flit by and we’ll have even less to remember. In the end, what is ten years anyway? It’s nothing more than the gap between season 1 and season 2 of The Night Manager.

Streaming Tip Of The Week:

The brilliant psychological horror film I Watched The TV Glow (Netflix) is about two teenagers mesmerised by a 1990s children’s show, going down a rabbit-hole to wondrous and scary discoveries about their world and themselves. Don’t read up about this one, just pop it on like a rented VHS tape.

Raja Sen (@rajasen) is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series.