This is why you can't stop watching 'bad' TV

By John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway University of London, Royal Holloway

TV viewing has become more important during the pandemic, but a sense of shame still lingers around it. Even TV scholars still use the term “guilty pleasures” to describe their enjoyment of reality TV or series which attract some of the biggest viewing audiences, such as I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, The Voice or Dancing With the Stars.

Some even call comforting, escapist dramas like Death in Paradise or Bridgerton their “guilty pleasures”. Such television still attracts the same negative labels (“unchallenging”, “low brow”) that were given to its antecedents in the 1950s.

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