TOM JACKSONGetting a bit bored, nights drawing in,
garden going dormant, six long months of no
fun at all stretching ahead, I have rediscovered
the delights of the telly. And what a lot of telly
there is! Thousands of hours of high-grade
content, enough to keep me occupied for a
couple of decades, after which I can die of
Covid and not worry about how to fill the time.
I’ve a lot of catching up to do. Going way
back, I’ve never watched so much as a minute
of The Sopranos or West Wing or Seinfeld. More
recently, I’ve never watched Black Mirror,
Broadchurch, Gogglebox, The Crown, Downton
Abbey or “that brilliant Finnish/Italian/Korean/
Moldovan” thing everyone’s talking about. It
makes me wonder what I have watched. In
those long empty months when Ve r a and
Death in Paradise aren’t on, at any rate.
What’s got me back into telly these past
weeks is Money Heist. Money Heist is Spanish,
absurd, compelling, repetitive, a bit sexy in a
juvenile way, occasionally funny and absolutely
safe. Despite the expenditure of tens of
thousands of rounds of ammunition at
point-blank range, hardly anybody gets hurt.
I got obsessed with the show in general, and
one character’s name in particular: Mónica
Gaztambide. I don’t know why. I don’t
especially like or dislike the character, I just
like the name. As do the screenwriters,
I notice, because the rest of the gang all say
“Mónica Gaztambide” a great deal, often
with little excuse.
Rachel printed out a picture of Mónica
Gaztambide from Wikipedia and stuck it in
the fridge. Not on the fridge; in the fridge.
“Why is this woman in the fridge?” asked
Svitlana, our cleaner.
Sam ordered me a T-shirt with MÓNICA
GAZTAMBIDE printed on the chest. I noticed
the nurse giving it a funny look when I went
for my flu jab.
It was Rachel who first alerted us to the
show’s popularity. Then she went away for
a few days and we started watching it without
her. “You’ve snaked me, basically,” she
complained when the treachery was revealed.
Me, Nicola and Sam admitted that, yeah, that’s
precisely what we’d done. Soz pants, Rache.
At first Rachel said she’d catch up, but then
she went off to try not to get coronavirus at
university. We waved her off – then dashed
back inside to inhale the rest of season one.
Followed in short order by seasons two,
three and four.
Thirty-one episodes, each about 50 minuteslong, about 26 hours of telly in all, done and
dusted inside a fortnight. Respect! Not our
binge-watch record – Jack Bauer dashing
about shouting in 24 still holds that – but
one night the three of us did rack up seven
episodes on the bounce, 8pm to 2am. Well
done, everybody!
Well done especially, given the prologue to
a session eats up a fair bit of time. First, there’s
the making of drinks and the fetching and
apportioning of tasty nutritious snacks. Then
there’s a debate over the cats: in or out? In,
and they tend to sit in front of the screen,
tread on the various remotes and testicles
available, nose into the snacks and generally
detract from the experience. Tiger might
curl up in gratifying cat-like fashion on a lap,
but Lucky hardly ever does. Out in the hall,
however, they miaow and butt their heads
against the door. The solution? Shut them in
the kitchen, of course. Not in our bedroom, as
we used to, because they’ve taken to crapping
in the en suite.
The bath, not the loo, otherwise it’d be fine.
Pets ejected, Sam and his mother confer
as to how to turn the telly on and retrieve the
programme. By mutual consent, I stay out of
this process. Turning on the telly used to be a
hassle when I was young – waving the aerial
up in the air, praying for vertical hold etc.
Then for several decades it got easy. Now it’s
got complicated again, in an HDMI, scart lead,
Sky box, password, source button, firesticky
kinda way.
Then we have to retrieve blankets, cushions,
pouffes and assorted soft furnishings. And
then me and Sam like to sing along to the
nasal, unintelligible and yet hauntingly folky
Money Heist theme tune.
After all that palaver, all that remains is
for me to remember not to keep wrongly
predicting what’s going to happen next. Not
easy, this self-restraint, but I’m learning my
lesson. In The Stranger not long ago, I’d told all
and sundry that Jennifer Saunders would be
exposed as a drug dealer because her café was
called Brown Sugar. It’s no kind of a spoiler
to reveal that Jennifer Saunders does not sell
heroin in this drama.
I thoroughly recommend The Stranger, by
the way. And Schitt’s Creek, which we’re tearing
through right now. If anyone would like to
return the favour with some hot telly tips,
1990-2020, I’m all ears. n[email protected]‘Binge-watching
telly f ills a lot of our
time now. Especially
working out how
to turn it on’
Beta male
Robert Crampton
© Times Newspapers Ltd, 2020. Published and licensed by Times Newspapers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF (020 7782 5000). Printed by Prinovis UK Ltd, Liverpool. Not to be sold separately.