We are in an era of ‘prestige television’, with unprecedented choice and quality. So why are so many of us streaming endless reruns of 90s sitcoms?
In the opening episode of Netflix’s animated
Hollywood satire BoJack Horseman, the eponymous steed gives a drunken speech about Horsin’ Around, the (fictional) feelgood sitcom that made him a star in the 90s. “For a lot of people, life is just one long, hard kick in the urethra,” he says. “And sometimes, when you get home from a long day of getting kicked in the urethra, you just want to watch a show about good, likable people who love each other – where no matter what happens, at the end of 30 minutes, everything’s gonna turn out OK.”
BoJack Horseman is a rare thing on
Netflix in that it is a) original, b) critically adored and c) extremely popular. It is the 15th-most-viewed Netflix show in the US, according to the analytics firm Jumpshot (one of the best guides to what is popular on the platform, as Netflix doesn’t release stats).