The first series I binge-watched was Alex Haley's Roots in 1986. As a kid I took it upon myself to watch the entire season. Perhaps it was the subject material compounded by my impressionable disposition but the show made an indelible mark on me.
I recently binged on Battlestar Galactica and was totally invested in the respective fates of the characters. Serial television allows characters to grow right in front of you. The canvas of episodic television is a vast reservoir for in-depth characterisation.
I prefer watching episodes consecutively one after the other. I can't stand waiting for the next episode.
When it comes to what to watch, I tend to follow critical acclaim. There is so much crap out there that just for my own wellbeing I need to be discerning.
Streaming services have not completely killed cinema-going, but they have changed the game. Netflix has over 100 million subscribers. As a filmmaker, any opportunity to engage such a vast potential audience is gratifying and gives me hope for a distribution platform for more auteur-driven films from filmmakers outside the mainstream.
Call me naive, but I reckon episodic series have leapt ahead of all formats in representing the pervading psyche of the millennial. Unlike film, series have enjoyed a revolution as far as content is concerned. It's been a golden age for episodic series and I hope it will affect feature filmmaking in a similar way.
I'm completing post production on my follow-up feature to Of Good Report. The film, Sew The Winter To My Skin, is an existential action adventure tale about a legendary native stock thief who terrorised white farmers in the '50s in the Karoo...