Netflix

I know I keep saying that in Decline of the West terms we’re all currently living in Rome, circa 400 AD. But now, on TV, there is actual proof of this in the form of a truly appalling reality series called Bromans (ITV2, Thursdays). Bromans is like a cross between Love Island and Carry On Cleo, so shamelessly low, tacky and brain-dead that it makes Geordie Shore look like Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation. Basically, a bunch of ridiculously buff lads strip off and participate in crap gladiatorial contests in which no one dies (thus entirely defeating the object), while their hot blonde girlfriends smoulder pointlessly in scanty outfits, and say stupid things like ‘I’ve gone 2,000 years back. I’ve never lived that far back.

In Beckett’s Happy Days a prattling Irish granny is buried waist-deep, and later neck-deep, in a refuse tip whose detritus inspires a rambling 90-minute monologue. ‘An avalanche of tosh’ was the Daily Mail’s succinct summary. Wings is similar but worse. Mrs Stilson (Juliet Stevenson), an American pensioner sheathed in white, hovers over the stage on ropes and talks non-stop gibberish. ‘Three times happened maybe globbidged, rubbidged uff to nothing there try again window up!’ Thus begins her battle with intelligibility. ‘And vinkled I,’ she goes on, ‘commenshed to uh-oh where’s it gone to somewhere flubbished what?

Most new Netflix series are greeted not merely with acclaim, but with a level of gratitude that the returning Christ might find a little excessive two minutes before Armageddon. In this respect, then, Atypical is proving rather atypical. The reason for the mixed reception is that its 18-year-old protagonist, Sam, has autism — and, as we know, in these righteous times fictional characters are judged not on whether they’re convincing individual creations but whether they’re virtuous enough as representatives of an entire group. Happily for the bloggers, by that all-important criterion, Atypical was bound to fall a little short.

Since completing season two of the brilliant Narcos, I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for a replacement serial drama that is more appealing than a bath and early bed. But the problem with TV these days is that series like Breaking Bad have set the bar so high that one ends up like a jaded emperor, forever rejecting good-but-not-quite-good-enough stuff for the most trivial of reasons. Better Call Saul (Netflix original), for example. I’ve tried getting into it a couple of times now (and probably will again because so many people rave about it) because I love Bob Odenkirk’s dodgy lawyer character. But I found he worked better as light relief in the context of Breaking Bad’s otherwise relentless and unforgiving bleakness.

There have been two revolutions in television during my lifetime. The first happened in 1975 when Sony launched its Betamax video system — which allowed viewers to record shows and see them when they wanted. Of course, Betamax was found to be clunky and unreliable and it was soon replaced by VHS but, without realising it, the networks had lost control of their audience. No longer would we watch the films they wanted us to watch when they wanted us to watch them. Never again, as the technology spread, would the whole nation come together as one to find out what the newscasters had been up to on Morecambe and Wise. The second revolution has been even more profound — and it’s happening right now. It can be defined in one word: Netflix.

St James’s Palace. 1953. A dynamic Duke of Edinburgh is relishing a ding-dong with the antediluvian fossils of the Coronation Committee. He wants to embrace modernity by allowing the BBC to televise the ceremony. The ‘grey old men’ want to continue doing things in exactly the same way that they have been done since 1066. Modernity prevails and the coronation is the biggest television spectacular there has been. This episode, splendidly recreated with a little artistic licence in The Crown, Netflix’s epic about the Queen, was a tipping point in terms of the public’s acceptance of the medium of television. Many viewers acquired their first sets for the sole purpose of watching the coronation. Now, in the television world, the wind of change is rising again.

Nairobi. February 1952. Laughing children brandishing sticks are driving an indignant bustle of ostriches up a rudimentary 1950s-Africa semi-bush runway towards the camera, when — WHOOSH! — right over their heads skims the exact BOAC aircraft in which the actual soon-to-be Queen Elizabeth flew to Kenya, as painstakingly rebuilt by the world’s top aircraft restorers at a cost of only $27 million... Actually, I made up the last detail. But if you want to know why the drama departments at the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV are quaking in their boots just watch a couple of episodes of Netflix’s sumptuous, leisurely and immaculate recreation of the Queen’s early years on the throne. It’s like the moment when America entered the war: ‘Such materiel!

Stranger Things is the most delightful, gripping, charming, nostalgic, compulsive, edge-of-seat entertainment I’ve had in ages. Like a lot of the best TV these days, it’s on Netflix, which I highly recommend so long as you can cope with the technical complexities of getting it to appear on your screen in the first place. Yeah, I know, all you bastard millennial types sneering at Granddad for his inability to do stuff that’s like so totally easy and obvious.

On the face of it, the Netflix documentary serial Making a Murderer should only take up ten hours of your life. Judging from my experience, though, its ten episodes will prove so overwhelmingly riveting that you’re going to need at least two more days to scour the internet in an obsessive quest for every scrap of information about the Steven Avery case — and several evenings to discuss it with any fellow viewers you can find. If the fuss about the series has so far passed you by (and if it has, it probably won’t for much longer), you may have to trust me that the story it tells — through such unspectacular old-school methods as assiduously researched footage, talking heads and the occasional caption — is from real life.

With 60 million international subscribers and a programme-making budget of about $3bn, Netflix is steamrolling most of the received wisdom about how we make and watch television. Already riding high on the success of prestigious hits like House of Cards and Daredevil, Netflix is expecting to bust new barriers with Sense8, whose 12 episodes became available to view today. The big news is that Sense8 marks the TV debut of Andy and Lana Wachowski, the enigmatic creators of the blockbusting Matrix movies, though riding a little less high of late following equivocal reactions to Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending.

Television is in a golden age. Or at least so we are told. If you weren't able to tell from the quality of the programming, the decadence of the parties would give the game away. With the vast budgets of HBO, Netflix and the like - the box-set barons that have usurped the grand Hollywood studios - big series now mean serious hospitality. This kind of pride usually comes before a fall, or at least some lukewarm reviews. Things are getting out of hand. The House of Cards premiere last month involved a whole hotel and a room full of pudding. Never to be outdone in matters of size, the epic fantasy series Game of Thrones marked the start of its fifth season by taking over the Tower of London and erecting a 1,000-seat cinema in its moat.