In this golden age of binge-watching, I’m consumed by a nostalgia for what I feel is disappearingIf you’re anything like me, what shared emotional life you might still have is mostly achieved by mainlining shows on a streaming service with your loved one perched on the sofa nearby. When I say loved one, I mean co-watcher.
![Netflix might dominate our viewing, but cinema brings us a different sort of pleasure | Josh Appignanesi](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/496f9f4976b4a3a263ecf3d8e095609fa4189cad/0_48_5392_3236/master/5392.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=5f98d8d5d889f25924274609a4062b33)
I’m not knocking
Netflix or HBO or, now, BritBox, or the rest. I depend on them. These shows – you know the ones I mean – dramatise the bits of our relationships we’re too exhausted to undergo the drama of ourselves. At their best, they even hand us a predigested, precritiqued dose of the vexed and vexing world we’re in, allowing us both an engagement with it and an escape from it.