Every millennial has a playlist that stops somewhere around 1999. We don’t mention it. It sits between the gym playlist we’ve abandoned and the podcast we’re a hundred and forty episodes behind on, and when the week goes badly, it’s the first thing we open.
A new series arrives with a budget the size of a small country, six seasons, a cast that has clearly been to the gym and a plot that needs a whiteboard and a free weekend. We watch eleven minutes, say “looks good”, and put on something where a man in a slightly too big jacket solves a murder in forty-two minutes and is home for dinner.
We know who did it. We always have known who did it.
Old sitcoms are a good place to hide as well. Six friends, one coffee shop, a flat the size of a ballroom, and not a landlord in sight. We know it isn’t realistic. Nor is the rent.
The studios have noticed, of course. Every film we loved is coming back, with a darker tone, a longer running time and a worse haircut.
The cartoons are worse. A grown adult with a pension statement they’re afraid to open will watch a lion in a red suit hold a sword up to the sky and ask it, quite politely, for sight beyond sight, and feel for twenty-two minutes that the bills have been postponed. Over on the other channel, two armies fire lasers at each other all day and nobody is ever hit. Cobra Commander loses every single week and is back on Monday with a new plan and the same budget. Then a child is told off by a man in camouflage for climbing a pylon, and that, we were informed, was half the battle. Nobody ever had to ring the bank. At school they told us adulthood meant being in charge. Nobody mentioned the paperwork.
Technology had a different attitude back then. We grew up with a phone attached to the wall by a curly cable. If someone wanted you, they rang. You were in or you weren’t, and nobody expected you to have an opinion about it. Today I have three apps that tell me my message has been read, and a fourth that tells me when.
The music held up its end too. A song from 1997 got in, did the job and left, in about three minutes ten, with a key change if it was feeling brave. I know a few people in meetings who should have listened to more of them. The worst thing that could happen to a Saturday in 1996 was a tangled cassette, and the repair kit was a pencil. Nobody has fixed anything with a pencil since.
If you need me this weekend, I’ll be in 1996. Leave a message. I’ll ring back when the line’s free.
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