About bad TV

A very odd article in The Guardian, about TV shows that the writers can no longer bear to watch. Of the dramas and comedies under discussion, five (The Office, This Life, Entourage, Euphoria, Coupling) now fail to pass muster because the behaviours and attitudes they depict, mainly with regard to gender and/or sexuality, are bad. The other two (Good Omens, House of Cards) are dismissed because real people connected with them (Neil Gaiman, Kevin Spacey) are alleged to have done bad things. Not one of these show is rendered unwatchable because it’s, aesthetically speaking, a bad work of art, because the writing or acting or direction or special effects or choice of lame 90s indie music on the soundtrack is below par.We seem to have slipped backwards a century or two, to a point where Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Tess of the d’Urbervilles or Wuthering Heights were castigated for their deviation from righteousness rather than their thin characters or predictable plotting. Criticism is dead.…