10 Things Everyone Hates About Modern TV
Every TV show being hyped as The Next Big Thing helps nobody.
We are blessed to be living through the Golden Age of Television - or "Peak TV," if you like - where there's a greater choice of quality TV shows than ever before.
There literally isn't enough time in a day to even scratch the surface of all the great content out there - an embarrassment of riches where storytellers can dig deeper into their narratives and characters than any two-hour movie could ever allow.
Over the last two decades, "prestige TV" has become an increasingly mighty competitor to cinema, and one only exacerbated by a pandemic that's closed cinemas for lengthy periods and encouraged us all to remain indoors.
TV has never been better, and yet, that doesn't mean it's perfect - far from it, in fact.
There are so many wonderful things about modern TV, but there are also many trends which undermine the art form's brilliance. To the surprise of nobody, they almost always come back to money.
Like all other media, TV follows trends and chases the big bucks wherever they are, because artistic integrity will almost always play second fiddle when an easy buck can be made. Speaking of which...
10. Endless Reboots, Revivals & Spin-Offs
There's nothing more indicative of Hollywood's creative stagnation than the higher-than-ever incidence of reboots, revivals, "reimaginings," and general spin-offs of recognisable IP.
It obviously follows that networks would rather produce content within existing, popular brands, but never before have studios more aggressively sought to mine their vaults of movies and TV for anything that can be recycled into "new" Content.
Disney has certainly been the worst offender as of late, taking decades-old franchises like Turner and Hooch and Doogie Howser, M.D. and giving them underwhelming reboots intended solely to pad out the Disney+ content conveyor-belt.
Elsewhere we've seen the likes of Prison Break, 24, and CSI, receive belated revivals, while Dexter and Law and Order are also getting the same treatment.
How about - and here's a radical idea - investing less in lazy nostalgia-bait and more in new ideas?
Yet because every network with their own streaming service wants to milk their back catalogue for every drop they're worth, this trend is probably only going to get worse in the coming years.
With Paramount recently announcing that they're going to scale back their theatrical blockbuster films in favour of more streaming movies and TV to support their Paramount+ service, expect them to do it as cynically as possible.
How long before we end up with a Top Gun series starring the hot young actor of the moment? How boring.