A Return to Simple and Slow

After a long time I was affected quite a bit by something I watched. That something is a web series on Netflix called After Life (review below). It’s been written and directed by Ricky Gervais. The thing about After Life is that it is at once a Ricky Gervais product, and yet it is not. Ricky Gervais as a stand-up gives you laughs that are momentary. As the writer and director of a web series he is a little deeper, a little more contemplative. The small town stories and happenings in the series touch a chord that very few series I have seen of late have managed to do. It was a feeling that seemed new to me simply because it surfaced, or rather resurfaced, after a long time. It made me sit back, pause, think, reflect. Something that I haven’t done in a while. And it made me realise how much my/our watching habits had changed, how much our expectations of what makes good content had changed. Per me the single catalyst that wrought this on us has been the pandemic.

Unbeknownst to many of us, the pandemic brought about a whole lot of behavioural changes in all of us. One of them being our often sleep-depriving-dependence on watching world class content at the switch of a platform on our screens. The action on screen became our vicarious pleasure since the action in our lives stuttered and sputtered. Unlike what Bruce Springsteen wrote about in his self-explanatorily titled song 57 Channels (And Nothin’ On), for once we were not starved for quality content to devour. And we have been devouring it in spades ever since, popularly called bingeing. To add to our (mock) misery, there is a formula to it that makes it impossible for us to wean ourselves off from going from one episode to the next. Our hunger is never satiated at just one episode.

The acceleration in technological advances, the ubiquity of an interconnected online world and the resultant viral spread of not just information, but people as well through the necessary evil of social media have all had a force multiplier effect on affecting, and effecting, the way we live, think and behave.

As mankind we have gone, at warp speed, from having a sense of wonderment about a lot of things to a feeling of déjà vu about everything. It’s like we are collectively living the line “There’s nothing you can throw at me that I haven’t already heard” from U2’s Stuck in a moment that you can’t get out of. We are not only living the specific line, but the title of the song as well.

The consistent and persistent assault through newer levels of violence, depravity, vices, perversions, drug abuse, toxicity, sociopathy, and the crudeness in even erstwhile clean elements like romance, comedy and drama have all contributed to a certain level of numbing of our senses and emotions. Reality TV has made voyeurs out of all of us. Even seemingly fun things like dance competitions, singing competitions, talent shows, dating shows … all have become hyper competitive, robbing the participants of the simple pleasures of their performances. Everything has become fast paced. The faster the better. No one should be given time to think and breathe. Everyone is running against time. All the time. There is no time to pause. No time to enjoy. No time to savour. A.I. comes into the mix here by immediately recommending us more of the type of content that we have just watched. And off we go again.

Everywhere we go, everything we see, everyone we meet, everything we experience … there is an element of scepticism. We inhabit a world where when something good happens, it feels too good to be true. Because we are consistently hammered with the message that if something is too good to be true, it often is not – either good or true. Doubt has replaced trust. We have started becoming emotionally weathered and jaded from a very young age. Impressionable age has become a redundant term. As Don Henley succinctly put in the title of his evergreen hit, ‘The End Of Innocence’.

We have forgotten what simple and slow is.

It wasn’t always like this.

Things were fairly simple not too long ago. We all led simple lives. We were simple in our outlook. Our problems were simple and straight forward. And the solutions we had were also simple things, simply done.

My fellow Indian GenX readers (yes I am showing off that I have a few ‘phoren’ subscribers) will fondly recall the movies and serials (as series used to be called) of the 70s and 80s. The likes of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee, Gulzar and their ilk gave us gems like Golmaal, Chupke Chupke, Baaton Baaton Mein, Damaad, Narama Garam, Angoor, Katha, Chashm-e-Buddoor, Parichay, etc that we never tire of watching even in their umpteenth re-runs on satellite television. Serials like Hum Log (though cringey in terms of production values), Buniyaad, Karamchand, Ados Pados, Aa Bael Mujhe Maar, Rajni, Khandaan, Darpan, Byomkesh Bakshi, etc not only entertained but passed on simple do-good messages without being preachy.

Even the limited overseas content that we watched on the silver screen as well as the small screen was wholesome entertainment. Be it Here’s Lucy, Fireball XL5 (cringe cringe on production values), The Old Fox, Telematch, Fawlty Towers, etc on TV or classics that came in late into our country like To Chase A Crooked Shadow, Roman Holiday, The Absent Minded Professor, Samson and Delilah, etc on the big screen – all of what we watched more often than not contributed to our world view and upbringing.

Am I stuck in a time warp?

Am I going all soppy?

Am I anti new content?

The answer is None Of The Above.

I relish as much of everything that is dished out on various OTT platforms as I can. I am guilty of having more subscriptions for content than many. I love true crime. I love drama. I love espionage. I love slow burn thrillers. I love detective stuff. I love ‘inspired by true events’ series. I love action. I love violence in all its gory glory. I love guns. I love knives. I love bloodshed. I love bloody heists. I love vigilante vengeance stories. I have overfed myself on all of these to the point that they have almost become staple content watching diet for me. I need my daily fix before I indulge in the shut eye. But ask me for any specifics of any of these and you will mostly find me searching. All of this kind of content was good while it lasted. It had its hour. It had its impact. It made me sit up and notice. But it didn’t reside in me. It didn’t occupy a special compartment that I could unlock as and when I wanted to. It didn’t leave an after taste to savour.

Which is where After Life came as a welcome surprise. A panacea, if you will. Simple stories revolving around simple problems faced by simple people which are resolved equally simply by simple thinking by those simple people. These become such a refreshing watch. They make you smile along with them. Laugh with them. Frown along with them. Get upset at them. Feel relieved along with them. Oftentimes you start relating to the proceedings on the screen so much that you find yourself visualising yourself in that milieu. They have a kind of meta feel to them – a bit like what R.E.M’s Michael Stipe croons in Losing My Religion – ‘I think I thought I saw you try’.

Below are some suggestions of simple and slow content (in no particular order) that stood out in all the frenzy of action-packed content. Content that I don’t mind going back to every now and then. You may have read some of the reviews in the Keep Watching section of my posts. Hopefully now you will put these on your watchlist. And watch them.

Be braver. Be kinder.

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Greedy, are we? The reviews on top weren’t enough that you come looking down here for one more?!? :-)