Remotely

A leading film critic on the evolving world of streaming media and its impact on society

The city at night under lockdown, a time of plague and anxiety. It is an exciting new age of television, the light that flutters in every cell in the city. But no one seems to be asking: What is the endless stream doing to us?

In Remotely, the most innovative writer on film and screens asks what happened to us as we sought consolation under lockdown by becoming a society of bingeing creatures. From Candid Camera and I Love Lucy to Ozark, Succession, and Chernobyl, David Thomson and his wife, Lucy Gray, wander through shows old and new, trying to pin down the nature and justification for what we call “entertainment.” Funny, mysterious, and warm, at last here is a book that grasps the extent to which television is not just a collection of particular shows—hits and misses—but a weather system in which we are lost pilgrims searching for answers.