In Praise of Meditative TV

Ambience offers the increasingly rare possibility of disengagement while still staring at a screen. Ambient television aims to erase thought entirely, smoothing any disruptive texture or dissonance.  It provides glossy, comforting oblivion, or, as Matisse once wrote, of his own paintings, “something like a good armchair.”

In this and other recent programming, Netflix is pioneering a genre that I’ve come to think of as ambient television. It’s “as ignorable as it is interesting,” as the musician Brian Eno wrote, when he coined the term “ambient music” in the liner notes to his 1978 album “Ambient 1: Music for Airports,” a wash of slow melodic synth compositions.

Mindless activities in front of screens are what I like to call “being dead while conscious.” These are the most readily available tools that allow us to leave ourselves, which can feel pretty good, or at the very least, pretty necessary. I am not against being dead while conscious. It’s hard to be a human living in a body. Sometimes it helps to be... See more

The advent of streaming, and cord-cutting, allowed viewers a more intentional relationship to TV, at least in theory. When Netflix and other platforms began dumping entire seasons of shows at once, binging became a byword for paying deep attention, as viewers gave themselves over to intricate drama or quirky comedy. But now we’re learning to stream... See more

The earlier era of prestige TV was predicated on shows with meta-narratives to be puzzled out, and which merited deep analyses read the day after watching. Here, there is nothing to figure out; as prestige passes its peak, we’re moving into the ambient era, which succumbs to, rather than competes with, your phone.

"There has never been more TV to watch. At any given time, you can stream shows old and new from platforms as wide-ranging as Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, and Amazon Prime, or you can indulge in a more niche service like Shudder (for horror fans) or Acorn (for British programming). If you find yourself paralyzed by the sheer wealth of content, ... See more