In this crisis, spare us the costume dramas 

I very much doubt that, in a couple of generations time, we will be recalling our current predicament with much pleasure or pride. Yet, if I am to be proved wrong on that front, I definitely can’t imagine the imagery being particularly glowing. We will not, I suspect, be calling on others to drag up some latent “Covid spirit’” to see us through the latest national adversity, nor can I foresee vintage posters of “Hands, Face, Space” or orders to “Stay Alert’” swelling the crops of merchandise in London pop-up shops for the delectation of passing tourists. Any child asking Daddy exactly what he did in the pandemic would most likely be met with a small chuckle and an admission of “not much, we just watched a lot of TV, drank more than was good for us and clapped with our saucepans”. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up having quite a few minutes’ silences at the end of this for a while, the frequency of which will mean that whenever sports matches do return, they’ll all start about a quarter of an hour late. 

Well, the part about television certainly does seem to be the legacy almost all of us can claim to be a part of. Binge-watching, which seems to be made up of the unholy combination of prolonged sessions of viewing and extensive drinking, has become a collective past-time. If I could share my experiences of this phenomenon, I would. But the urge to say “Let’s just watch one more” ad infinitum, while sprawled on the sofa I’ve occupied for most of the day, clutching drinks numerous beyond recall, has so far passed me by. But, from the look of many of the headlines, I’ll admit to being in a small minority here. 

First, there was last year’s Normal People: a lust-infused feast of self-pity supplied by two languorous Irish teenagers. It sounded as though it had been written as a comedy sketch by someone intent on showing up all youngsters as morose “snowflakes”. And why, I wonder, is it always the Eng Lit students who get all the action? 

This year, Bridgerton seems to have caught the zeitgeist, with Netflix continuing to show their now almost complete dominance of the market for original dramas. Again, I can’t claim to be wholly among the cognoscenti when it comes to such a show, but even the briefest of viewings made it easy to establish the pedestals upon which the show tries to stand. The words “period drama” are normally enough to put me off, but little did I comprehend the extent to which such a genre is exemplified in this new show. It is a Jane Austen pastiche, with all the trimmings of social inadequacy, long sideburns, judgemental narrators, and repressed sexuality firmly entrenched. Though it’s slightly disingenuous to speak of sexual repression, since a lack of erotic inhibition seems to be one of the main attractions of this new series. I certainly can’t find any other qualities which would make it the show of choice for so many. 

Martin Amis once said that he thought the trouble with Pride and Prejudice was that it lacked a sex scene, so it would be easy to suggest that Bridgerton might fulfil his hopes. I doubt it will, though, for Amis doesn’t strike me as one for such a mix of bawdy, prissy, provincially boring television as this. There is barely anything original about this kind of tripe. It gives the viewers exactly what most have tuned in for: a mix of elaborate parties, fancy dresses, awkward parents, even more awkward lovers, and a bit of the aforementioned action in the four-poster beds. It harks back to some vague period from “before”: a version of early 19th-century England without any of the disease, poverty, slavery, loneliness, disenfranchisement, and general cultural paucity of the time. 

Yet, beyond my own dismissal of such a Netflix fantasy world, I cannot see period dramas — even those scripted and made here rather than in California — representing anything other than a symptom of real cultural decline. This constant searching in the bowels of our glorified past to fill our screens seems to be the worst kind of national defeatism. It gives anyone who watches the heady notion that only in the golden age of such distant times was Britain really much good, and isn’t it a shame that everyone is so impolite nowadays, and look how powerful we once were! This idea that all the greatest British art, literature and music is in the past betrays a pernicious form of conservatism, one that can only lead to our culture eventually grinding to a complete halt. 

When such a cultural retreat is beaten, all we will be left with is the latest adaptation of an obscure nineteenth-century novel with all the requisite innuendos, farce, and banal characters. Although actually reading such novels, which has supposedly seen an uptick in lockdown, will not be very widespread. The reason Jane Austen’s work survives is not just for her attractive plots and the ingenuity of their development, but for the memorable characters and masterful prose. No one can seriously claim such virtues in most of the costume dramas which blight our screens. Indeed, some Austen rehashes have been nearly enough to put me off the novels altogether.

Nietzsche (who never visited these shores) says somewhere that the industrious English made Sundays so “holy and tedious” in order that the average workman would, without knowing it, yearn for the weekdays and their work. Now it seems as though every day is a torpid version of the same. Only instead of going out to work, most people are glued to their screens, fixated on a world which bears no relation to their own, yearning for one of the people of the screen to kiss the other, provided that they both fit our expectations of beauty. 

There is much to celebrate in today’s British culture, but the infestation of it by such monotonous dreck won’t be making for a country buoyed by its intellectual prowess as a global player. Both for yourself and for any remaining hopes of becoming such a haven of the world’s best, grab the remote and switch it off. And don’t go looking for the next costume drama series; you won’t be missing anything. 

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