Did I miss anything? My life of extreme binge-watching

I was forced into binge-watching against my will. Don’t get me wrong, it had nothing to do with Quinn from Homeland, or indeed Quinn from Dexter (although if they ever get together it would make a fun show). No: the dish on the side of the house stopped working, and now I have to watch everything on demand.

So I was particularly interested when Netflix, that most secretive of broadcasters, put out some data this week revealing – well, opening the door a tiny bit then slamming it shut again – how its customers watch its TV shows. But like long stretches of Game of Thrones, I’m not entirely sure what it all meant.

The streaming service’s “binge scale” said its users typically finished the first series of a TV show in just one week, watching a little over two hours a day. Shows that are “devoured” – Breaking Bad, American Horror Story, Dexter – are watched even quicker, with cult sci-fi show The 4400 the most swiftly consumed in the UK, watched from start to finish in just four days. That’s going like the clappers, even for a show you really like.

I am a self-confessed binger, and I wouldn’t be without it. It started with ER: having missed out when normal people were watching, I binged the whole thing – all 15 series, that’s 331 episodes – pretty much back-to-back in 2010. Then came the West Wing (156 episodes in six months) and the Sopranos (86 episodes in three). After that, Six Feet Under (a mere 63 episodes) felt like a sprint. Six Feet Under beget Dexter; Breaking Bad was followed by Better Call Saul. Did I mention The Wire? I also watch an episode of Seinfeld every time I get on the rowing machine. At current rates, I should finish sometime in 2023.

The advent of Netflix, Amazon and Now TV – somehow I have managed to end up with all three – mean linear broadcasters are not just competing with each other any more. They are up against every TV show that has ever been made (I exaggerate, but if you watched the Netflix archive every waking hour you’d still be going by the time Interstellar became reality).

But is it all a good thing? I’m not so sure. I miss the old days of a varied TV diet – panel show, drama, sitcom, Newsnight. I have only myself to blame, of course, but without the paternalistic hand of the scheduler I’m just chowing down on the same meal until I throw up or run out, then go off hungry in search of something else.

I wonder whether some of the shows I gobble up in a week might have benefited from what former ITV boss Peter Fincham called the “pleasure of deferred pleasure”. Just because an entire box set is available, you don’t have to watch all in one go. But in my household, that’s like buying a bottle of wine on Thursday and thinking it’ll still be around to drink at the weekend.

Take Game of Thrones. In the age of binge-watching, it’s a TV highlight of the week, and watching one at a time of course gives the chance to digest, reflect and read the Guardian episode by episode blog. Compare this to my four-season marathon catch-up slog (I was late to the party), which started out fun but by the end felt like the sort of endurance test Clive James used to talk about.

In one eye and out the other, I was just thrilled to watch the news again. Plus, I had no one to discuss it with. It was the same with Making a Murderer. As my erstwhile colleague Boyd Hilton pointed out this week, the chances of finding someone binge-watching anything at the same time as you are minimal.

And here’s another thing. Netflix said customers who took longer to watch a series were “savouring” it. Well, maybe. Or maybe they just didn’t like it and were struggling to get to the end. I speak as someone who just watched all eight series of Dexter, which took the best part of three months. Did I miss anything?