Self-isolation offers a chance to catch up on the classics – but that requires a calm it’s currently hard to muster. In the first of a new series, one writer reveals the truth about their coronavirus viewing habits
Last week, the BFI released a list of the films streaming on
Netflix and
Amazon Prime. It’s terrific. It contains several movies I’ve always wanted to see (Adelheid, Images) and several I love and want to see again (The Green Ray, Orphée). The weekend was beckoning and the world appeared to be ending. I drafted a timetable of all the great films I would watch.
Now it is Monday and the timetable is in ruins – which is to say that I didn’t watch a single film. What I watched was the
BBC news, which is playing as a real-time adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, The Stand. What I watched was five episodes of the French sitcom Call My Agent, all of which I had seen before. What I watched was a Netflix documentary about a demented cowboy who ran a tiger park in Oklahoma. What I watched was the first half of The Wizard of Oz with my five-year-old son, just before he went to bed. Happily, he seems to have liked it saying: “The only thing I really, really hate are the songs.”