Tuesday night, I hit «Netflix Peak». Exploring what the streaming service has to offer, broken down into idiotic subsections like «Intoxicating TV dramas about marriage,» «High eyebrow [inexplicably two words] Science Fiction,» and «Critically acclaimed films,» turned up nothing interesting. A similar story was on Amazon Prime, ITVX and Now TV. So in desperation, I reached into an old cabinet full of DVDs.
I hadn't looked there in a while — since Blockbuster closed its last UK store in 2013 — and was surprised by what I found. Back in the 2000s, I accidentally became a collector. I bought great box sets with works by Louis Malle, Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen; bought heavy TV shows from Brideshead Revisited to Seinfeld. Then there were the oddities—forgotten sketch comedy shows like Big Train and Jam, and examples of obscure 1960s films from John Cassavetes and Barney Platts-Mills—that once allowed me to stroke my beard with friends in pub. Who needs Netflix when I have my own collection of finished DVDs to drool over?
My journey through the memories was timely. Earlier this week, it was announced that Disney would be ending DVD and Blu-ray production in Australia, with Guardians of the Galaxy 3 being its last. This news is deeply depressing: similar maneuvers will probably soon take place on other continents, including ours. Watching so much on our laptops or smartphones is a sign of our changing consumer habits, but I think DVDs are important for several reasons.
Above all, they have played a decisive role in the preservation of our cultural heritage. I am old enough to belong to a generation that received a decent cultural education from television. You could find classic films on BBC Two late at night; the broadcast coverage of the arts was invigorating and you felt like you had learned something without the patronage of an over-the-top host. Then there were group screenings that convinced you which books to read and which plays to watch: I still remember the thrill of seeing Tom Paulin, Tony Parsons and our own Allison Pearson in the Late Review discussing the latest Amis or Stoppard. p>
But then, in the late 1990s, everything changed. The BBC's budget cuts meant that fiction programs that rarely made ratings were laid bare, while the onslaught of Sky meant you had to pay a hefty subscription to see a lot of classic films. The late review was much less rigorous, a sign (I feel) of growing anti-intellectualism in Britain. Part 3 will be the last Disney DVD to be released in Australia. Photo: Marvel Studios
And that's where the DVD comes in to help, filling in the gaps, allowing you to buy — often very cheaply — things you've heard about but weren't available. It may not be fashionable to praise Kenneth Clark's 1969 shamelessly patrician Civilization series, but the DVD box set has become my favorite.
DVD makers quickly tapped into the nostalgia market. The market leader was Network DVD, a no-frills British company that brought many popular TV shows from the 1970s and 1980s back into our living rooms. Among other things, they produced a virtuoso adaptation of Arthur Hopcraft's 1977 novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens, which has not been repeated for decades and which I have long wanted to see.
It wasn't until May of this year that the company went into liquidation, and part of my sadness at their demise is that their catalog almost certainly won't end up somewhere like Britbox. Like some streaming companies, Britbox only seems to buy or stream shows that are algorithm-friendly: that people have actually heard of or are looking for. As a result, streamers often promote a false archive that does not represent the treasures of our past. (To be honest, iPlayer is much stronger in these matters: the BBC uses its vast resources to bring attention to the mysterious or the forgotten, most recently the forgotten 1980 drama about J. Robert Oppenheimer starring Sam Waterston.)
Memory Lane: DVDs took a hit when Blockbuster closed its last UK store in 2013. Photo: powys photo/Alamy Stock Photo
There are other reasons why DVDs are important: they are excellent as a product, often true works of beauty, with elaborate liner notes and superb extras. Some say such extras are just for nerds, but I believe that an erudite director's commentary or a tangential extra documentary can really increase your enjoyment of a movie or TV show. On the other hand, launching the latest episode of The Crown on Netflix, waiting for data to stop buffering on your laptop, seems bleak by comparison.
Even though the streaming is constantly proclaiming a brave new dawn, I would argue that it is actually retrograde. For years, television was treated as ephemeral: because videocassettes were expensive and reusable, the show was often broadcast and then never shown again (which explains why so much of the archive has been lost).
Streaming avoids this problem, but only further reduces the importance of TV because shows can just come and go and viewers are left overwhelmed by the amount of (implied) variety. (Besides, streams are not really permanent: they can suddenly disappear, for example, when license agreements change.)
One DVD on a carefully selected shelf is a tangible thing that you can return to, leaving a little some of it is imprinted in your brain; the endless quagmire of streaming movies won't have the same effect — and that's bad for all of us who are constantly trying to promote the importance of film and television. So what did I watch on Tuesday night? Claude Chabrol's 1970 masterpiece Boucher, a terrifying love story starring Stéphane Audran, is viewed on DVD stored in a stylish retro case. This is something to cherish.
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