Binge me up, Spacey
Two heroic Swedes clocked 90 hours of TV hedonism. I’m going to beat them
THE world record for binge-viewing TV was broken just a few weeks ago in Stockholm. Two young bearded chaps smashed the previous record (87 hours) by watching episodes of the action series 24 for 90 straight hours. The Guinness World Records regulations specified that each participant was given five minutes per hour to go to the loo, which actually seems quite generous to me. I’ve lived in house-shares which had more stringent rules for endurance TV watching.
“It’s been great to really test our limits,” one of the record-breaking dudes said afterwards. “Binge-viewing is a team sport and we are both winners.” I don’t know too many other “team sports” where you can “test your limits” while wearing a baggy cardigan and shovelling biscuits into your mouth, but it was probably the endorphins talking.
In general, binge-viewing TV isn’t the sort of pastime that makes you feel like an athlete in your prime. Anyone who has ever dedicated an entire weekend to gorging on a TV show can testify that when you stagger glassy-eyed from the couch, the dominant emotion is often shame. But the good news: you are far from alone. A poll in December 2013 found that fully a quarter of adult respondents admitted to having watched a 13-hour season of a TV series within two days.
There have been attempts to claim that this sort of TV watching is good for you. The UK Independent suggested in February that binge-watching is not “mindless recreation”, but a “restorative experience”. But this argument seems to depend entirely on the quality of the TV you’re watching. Thirteen hours of The Tudors might be meditative; transcendental. Thirteen hours of Jersey Shore is how the perpetrators of mass shootings get in the mood.
Still, as others have pointed out, there’s something intrinsically judgey about the phrase “binge-viewing” in the first place. It suggests gluttony and a lack of control. The connotations might be perfectly valid in some contexts, but nobody ever refers to “binge-reading” the collected works of James Joyce, or “binge-listening” to Philip Glass’s experimental opera.
Like it or not, binge-viewing is changing how many people are watching TV shows. The days of gathering around the office water-cooler to discuss last night’s episode of X-Files are on the wane. People want to watch TV in gluts when it’s convenient, and even notoriously slow-to-react South African broadcasters are clearly taking note.
Enter MultiChoice’s latest initiative. For the first time, a South African TV broadcaster is offering viewers the chance to watch the entire first and second season of a show all in one go. DStv subscribers have been able to access House of Cards season 1 on Catchup from the end of May, and they are able to watch season 2 since Friday on the same service, two weeks before the second season starts airing on M-Net.
House of Cards is perfect for winter bingeviewing. Set in Washington DC, the political drama follows Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), a Democratic congressman who hatches a series of Machiavellian plans to win himself power after failing to secure the secretary of state position. Spacey is superb in this role, and clearly having a lot of fun in it: morally ambiguous and scheming, a Southern gent with an iron fist. Robin Wright plays his equally ambitious wife, Claire, all regal and serene in starched shirts, but with her own darkness bubbling below.
House of Cards also has two aspects which make bingeing a particular temptation: it’s narratively complex, and the plotlines are deeply suspenseful. World record for bingeviewing TV? Challenge accepted.