X Rated

The arrival of a teevee box set on iTunes is always something to be celebrated.  For five quid, you can have days of entertainment, the sort that requires you to lie motionless on the couch only moving occasionally to visit the kitchen to forage for sustaining snacks.  This is the sort of activity that lends itself more to the sporting of pyjamas in the daytime and DVT stockings rather than athletic wear, or proper clothes.  Essentially, it's a return to the halcyon days when Test Match Special was on the proper telly.

Of course, unless it is made with the confidence of late night shopping, no entrainment purchase is made without at least some internal debate which, with the advent of streaming services, has become somewhat fraught.  Do you buy now, or do you wait until it's even cheaper, and what if it doesn't get even cheaper, but what if it appears for free on Netflix, but what if it vanishes from Netflix unexpectedly before you have finished watching it?

Suggested solution is purchase the damn thing and live with the self loathing.

At least one no longer has to factor pirate streaming services into the consideration.  Once a swashbuckling way to thumb your nose at the faceless monolithic entertainment corporations who produced your favourite shows but always, always, were worthy of your contempt because they would one day cancel a beloved show or, worse, allow it to continue when it was plainly past it's best, experiencing a sort of series senility, pirate streaming sites allowed one to enjoy postcard sized low-res episodes of your favourite shows with the added bonus of Korean subtitles.  Today, they are a gateway to more viruses than a hooker's wet wipe and best avoided unless you have a computer you can put in quarantine.

If you believe the media, you would think that box sets were a recently recent invention.  And they are, for mainstream telly.  However, any geek will tell you that genre television has known and embraced the box set for many, many years.  I recall visiting homes where the bookcases would be home to Buffy box sets.  I didn't criticise, as my own bookcases contained VHS box sets of The X Files.  This was like Buffy but crucially was for adults, and had a much fitter female lead.

The thing about box sets is that they require effort to watch.  This is not another blog entry about how modern technology has ruined it for everyone and kids today don't have an appreciation of how the arts should be enjoyed, but anyone watching telly on their iPad on a train should be flogged.  How are you supposed to enjoy plot, pace, tension and characterisation with station announcements every three minutes and the screen reflecting  everything going on around you.  It's not just vampires that sunlight is harmful to, it's atmospheric lighting on set too.

Box sets require investment.  The best reason to purchase one is to binge, to exhibit your mastery over the schedules and to pull up from that cliffhanger.

Geeks have time.  That's why Buffy and the X Files were so popular on VHS back in the day.  It's probably also why Ally McBeal box sets were so popular.  These too were watched by people in pyjamas, it's just that these people were women.

There will be people who are now considering the purchase of box sets online that they previously owned on VHS and also possibly on DVD.  The's an argument that these people should be able to download for free and that anyone who went the VHS/DVD/BluRay route should get a free download and a refund.  Seriously, if this is the fourth format you are going to buy in, you have to be wondering whether it's worth skipping downloads and waiting for the next iteration of box set.

I had a few series of the X Files on VHS, purchased at huge expense and thrown out a few years ago, as charity shops no longer accept VHS tapes as donations.

So, obviously, now is the time to replace those box sets, clear the schedules, launder the pyjamas and prepare for hundreds of hours of broadcasting excellence, all the while marvelling at how young Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny look in series one.