Saturday, July 14, 2012

The joy of sets

A few years ago, 6th November 2006 to be precise, as recorded here:

http://gentlemanandplayer.blogspot.co.uk/2006_11_01_archive.html

I saw a woman buying a ‘Sex and the City’ box set. I recall that she was out shopping with her mother and that she looked excited at the prospect of going home and binging on Carrie & Co. I made the confident prediction that in a few years we wouldn’t be buying box sets. Well, the amount of the bloody things on display on the shelves of HMV would seem to indicate that I am crap at predictions, but at least I didn’t predict that she would remain a Sex and the City fan until the end of time, as I strongly suspect that for most Sex and the City fans, appreciation ended at the closing credits of the second movie.

While you can buy whole series of TV on iTunes, you can still buy a bewildering amount of stuff in box set form these days, not just television series, but sporting events. You can get the Ashes, or the Formula 1 season on DVD. Now, I like having boring sports on in the background as much as any bloke, but I draw the line at springing thirty quid, cancelling all engagements and settling down to watch an entire season of curling or something.

Sporting DVDs are, if I may be permitted a sexist generalisation, for men. Not aimed at men, for men, there’s a difference. Computer games are aimed at men but women play them too, but there are two things that no self respecting woman would ever purchase, a DVD box set of a sporting event, and a Jeremy Clarkson book. The male market is why there are DVD box sets ‘special editions’. Same product, on sale two months after initial release, but in a tin! Must have!

Binging on box sets is such glorious luxury. If you can ignore the ironing and the way your carpet is starting to crunch underfoot, then you have the moral fortitude to shirk the housework and spend Sundays on the sofa with the curtains tightly drawn, eating wotsits and viewing an entire series of your new favourite programme in one go, and, given the trends in box sets that are selling at the moment, learning a new language, probably Swedish, Dutch or Icelandic, probably the vocabulary that would allow you to converse more easily with a pathologist than a children’s entertainer. You hope.

Of course women buy box sets too, and not just as presents for men. In particular women buy ‘Downton Abbey’ box sets. Male fans can be seen hanging around the doorway of HMV, offering women money and asking if they will buy them a box set of Downton on their behalf.

And of course while spunking thirty quid on a box set is tremendous fun, there are on line alternatives. iPlayer catch-up is a glorious use of a Sunday. One can seek out charming and marvellous programmes that lurk on BBC2, 3 and 4 and end the evening a more educated and erudite person than you entered it, it’s like the science of the ‘Eastenders’ omnibus, but used for good.

Particularly worth watching at the moment is ‘Great British Rail Journeys’ with Michael Portillo, a man who has reinvented himself more thoroughly than Dr Jekell ever did. Before Beeching butchery, he would, like the Olympic flame, have travelled within 97% of the population of Great Britain. Now, he is confined to travelling on charming, picturesque stretches of line through beautiful countryside, occasionally stopping off to visit cheese makers or glass blowers and the like.

Unlike most rail journeys, one simply doesn’t want this to end. Possibly there are another couple of series in it before they are forced to move to ‘Mediocre British Rail Journeys’ and then ‘Shite British rail Journeys’ which will at least have that glorious television moment when many viewers recognise their own carriage or stretch of commute.

A binge on this series is like a holiday from home and that, together with our intolerance of having to wait a week for the next episode, means box sets are here to stay. (Disclaimer – that might be total bollocks).

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