From Quiz to I May Destroy You: how communal TV-watching made a comeback

The way we used to watch television and the way we watch it now is very different. Many of us watch it without a television. Just as most of us listen to the radio without a radio. We read, but sometimes it is by way of an icon of a book on a screen (there is a term for nods to old formats in design; skeuomorphism).

The water-cooler gossip over last night’s TV belongs to a different era. But, due to the coronavirus pandemic, even six months ago was a different era. We have been going to the theatre via YouTube; visiting galleries on Street View. We have had to adapt and adjust to appreciate art.

One thing that has managed to bind households together, however physically separate, has been a reversion to water-cooler moments. A term that described office workers, or kids in school, discussing the previous night’s event television is now repurposed for the digital era. The habit we have fallen into since is binge-watching online, with box sets or television on-demand services, bulk streaming series dropped in their entirety on Netflix, and being asked, “Are you still watching?” as though we haven’t been lying prone for four hours, laptop on stomach, and won’t be for another four.

But communal watching is making a return. Bodyguard, Jed Mercurio’s political thriller was released in the autumn of – get ready for this, because it seems absurd – 2018. Our critic gave it five stars, and the nation seemed to agree, holding its breath together in the opening scene of the first episode. It became the BBC’s most watched drama show since current record formats began, with an audience peak of 17 million for the finale.

At the beginning stages of the pandemic, James Graham’s Quiz, based on his play – itself based on the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? 2001 cheating scandal, which involved a suspect win by couple Charles and Diana Ingram – lit up social media. ITV’s three-part drama was always likely to be a success, given the notoriety of the subject matter. But the genius of Quiz was that its popularity on social media, and the fact that we were all watching in tandem, brought in an interactive element. That was, of course, the foundation of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? which, quite literally, “asked the audience”. Theatregoers at Graham’s play were also asked a question, both at the interval and at curtain down: guilty or not guilty?

It was a question that obsessed the nation during the Ingrams’ trial, and a question that obsessed us all again. Not only was everyone brought together nightly in a time of enforced isolation, but it was a nostalgic bond. What made it even better were the anecdotes that Graham tweeted about the making of the show, and that Charles Ingram himself got involved, replying to tweets and retweeting others. The Ingrams pleaded not-guilty at trial, were found guilty, but have always insisted they were innocent. They are currently appealing the sentence.

Somewhat surprisingly, the lucrative, much-wooed youth audience of 16- to 34-year-olds are getting on board with this old-fashioned idea of delayed televisual gratification. The first series of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, commissioned by BBC Three (which went online-only in 2016), was released all at once on iPlayer. But the second, and final, 2019 series proved to be well worth the wait for fans when it was released in weekly Monday-night instalments. Although each episode was released on iPlayer at 10pm, the BBC hoped that its young fans might be lured into watching it on BBC One half an hour later, bringing in a younger audience to its main broadcast channel, which has an average viewer age of 61.

More recently, the sublime I May Destroy You, by Michaela Coel, has also been released online on Mondays, this time in a duet of episodes each week. Killing Eve, another vehicle involving Waller-Bridge, returned to a weekly instalment for its third series – online and on traditional television – after previous series debuted on iPlayer all at once. (To British fans’ annoyance, episodes aired a day ahead in the US.)

Normal People, based on Sally Rooney’s novel of the same name, has been another impeccable 2020 hit. The 12-part series (you guessed it, a BBC Three commission) was released in box set format on iPlayer; doubling BBC Three’s opening-week record for online requests (previously held by Killing Eve) and also had a broadcast BBC One run with two episodes airing each Monday night. (This strategy of bringing BBC Three’s youngsters over to BBC One has annoyed the News at Ten, which has taken a 10-minute programme cut.) It has even been mooted that BBC Three will make a comeback to traditional broadcast television.

Normal People was typical in its treatment online as a “water-cooler” success; screen-grabs, memes and hashtags. Every other tweet during April seemed to be about Connell’s chain (it even has an Instagram account). What is interesting about all these shows that are released both in all-at-once and weekly episodes is a sort of tacit online pact, that viewers, whether effusive or critical in their opinions, will not post obvious spoilers. Just as one would be given short shrift IRL, it is met with backlash.

Of course, modern reality television shows – Love Island, The Great British Bake Off – by their very format, have always lent themselves to social media communal watching. This behaviour is the direct descendant of people staying home in the evening to watch Big Brother on an actual television screen, wrapping the spiralling landline cord around their fingers while assessing eviction predictions, in real-time, with a friend.

With sport it has always been so – think of the well-known National Grid surge at half-time when everyone made their cups of tea. Now, on weekends when the top Premier League teams are playing, hashtags trend for those seeking to contribute armchair commentary. It is the same with Wimbledon (which often has its own Twitter custom emojis, known as “hashflags”). If you wake in the night like I do, it is a US sport I don’t know the name of everyone is talking about.

Given that the way we consume dramatic programming was starting to shift back to this communal model even before the pandemic (see also: the massive online popularity of The Bros documentary), it looks as though this new habit will continue. Especially when we look at the popularity of the National Theatre’s Live series on YouTube, and the success of Disney+ showing Hamilton earlier this month.

In particular, it seems that giving viewers the choice of binge-watching or watching weekly is the way to go. But I would not be surprised if an increasing number of people are choosing the latter option, on the basis of looking forward to the online discussions and reactions. This change in viewing habits is even having an impact on how shows are written and directed.

The BBC recently won approval by Ofcom, after a competition assessment, for shows to remain on iPlayer for a year rather than 30 days. People will continue to have opportunities to watch shows in their own time and at their own pace, but increasingly we are all in this together. Whether that be debating whether or not the Hot Priest is a good guy or discussing that I May Destroy You ending.