G.K. Chesterton on why today’s TV shows are so boring

As I kept losing interest in "prestige" TV shows, I began to ask myself what particular quality I was missing from them. Chesterton showed me the answer.​

I’m just going to come out and say this. Sometimes, when you’re a writer, you simply have to grit your teeth and make a blunt statement. Prestige television — the high-toned, sophisticated dramas that win all the awards — is boring.



Not all of it, to be sure, but enough that I started to grow suspicious. Something is wrong with modern storytelling. For instance, that show about big city lawyers bending the law in clever ways while trying to justify the guilt of their moral complicity? I made it about halfway through the series and bailed.

And that show about the science teacher who becomes a drug dealer and slowly becomes corrupted? It was like watching paint dry. Or the anti-hero mobster in Jersey who is ruthless with his enemies but has a conflicted, soft side with his family and talks to his therapist about his feelings of guilt, as if that somehow makes him a sympathetic guy? Not interested.


Does this make me a philistine? Probably. Does it mean I have trouble appreciating modern-day art? Almost certainly. Perhaps the issue is entirely within me. Maybe I’m the one with the defective sensibilities. I prefer turning the television off to re-read Lord of the Rings or stories of the saints or old fairy tales — or even re-watch old sitcoms from the 80s.

For a long time, I would force myself to watch prestige television. After all, so many award committees couldn’t be wrong. But as I watched, I couldn’t help but to lose interest. After this happened enough times, I began to ask myself what it is, what particular quality I was failing to find compelling.

Stories that lead nowhere​

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