Attribution: Photo by Nicolas J Leclercq on Unsplash
By Geoff Carter
Since the SAG and screenwriters’ strikes, there has been a lot of anxiety and handwringing about the anticipated dearth of new movies and television series. Without writers or actors, there will be no new productions—no new installments from the Marvel or the D.C. Universe, no new Star Wars spinoffs, and no new Disney live-action remakes of animated classics. Nothing new. So, what is the discerning viewer to do should the strike stretch on? Tune into MeTV for the three-day marathon of Gilligan’s Island reruns? Go to Sundance and watch Law & Order episodes for the umpteenth time? These are possibilities, but the truth is that the streaming market is saturated—flowing over its banks as it were—with hundreds, if not thousands, of new viewing choices.
According to Statista, there were a total of five hundred and ninety-nine original scripted series aired in the U.S in 2022. Five hundred and ninety-nine series. For one person to sit and watch all these series in their entirety would take months, if not years. This cornucopia of viewing pleasure includes broadcast programming, streaming series on both premium and basic cable networks, as well as PBS programming. That is a lot of viewing. A lot of choices.
And this is besides the huge number of feature-length films available on the television. Max (formerly HBO), Disney, Showtime, Peacock, Apple TV, Prime Video, The Criterion Channel—and more, feature hundreds of vintage and recent releases. In fact, there are so many viewing options, the process of choosing which film to watch in an evening can take the better part of an hour.
Some cable channels, like the Hallmark Channel, have quite the inventory. According to Insider, Hallmark produced over forty different holiday movies in 2022. This is besides the hundreds already in its vaults. And this is just Christmas pictures. Never mind storybook romances about exiled hunky princes or big city girls finding love in the country. Hallmark holiday movies are in their own zone. On Direct TV, there are two Hallmark channels—one devoted solely to holiday pictures, the other stocked with all the other non-holiday romances. One could spend every week of the year watching a new (as new as these formulaic movies get) Hallmark Christmas movie.
The upshot of all this is that even if the WGA SAG-AFTRA strike persists into the next year, there will not be a shortage of films or series to watch. Although this might not be the most current programming, some of it will have to be new to someone somewhere. It’s difficult to believe that any one person will have seen all five hundred ninety-nine programs aired last year. And, even if the most dedicated couch potato was able do that, the hundreds—perhaps thousands—of films available should keep the most dedicated cinephile busy.
So, as we did during the pandemic lockdown, the Pen in Hand will be winnowing through this maze of feature films, limited series, documentaries, miniseries, and animated programming in order to recommend the best your streaming service has to offer. Hopefully, if SAG-AFTRA and WGA reach a settlement with the studios, this will be unnecessary. But if—and it looks as if a settlement is pretty far off—then the typical American viewer might have to study the station menus and say, “Yeah, I heard Six Feet Under was pretty good,” or “Yeah, I never had a chance to see that movie Big Fish. Let’s check it out.”
The difficulty will not be finding something to watch, it’s going to be in choosing something to watch out of the hundreds of options available. Going through the Netflix menu is sort of like standing at the candy counter. Every new item you see looks better than the last. Categories like sci-fi, horror, or romance can help pare things down, but many of the titles are unknowns.
For example, in the horror category, relatively little-known films like Lake Mungo or Let the Right One In or They Follow are hidden gems. Documentaries like The White Helmets or My Octopus Teacher or 13th or Gods of Mexico might not be as exciting or action-packed as Thor or The Avengers, but they do offer a vision of the world—the real world, not the prefab version of a reality show—that could prove to be new and insightful.
Viewers looking for something new might discover that the old is just as fascinating—perhaps even more so—than the numbingly similar superhero movies studios have been churning out for over a decade. If the sagas of The Avengers or Star Wars or Game of Thrones cannot continue tacking on sequels or prequels or origin stories or spinoffs, and that audience—bewildered at this new unfamiliar terrain of a studio film desert—might find something new.
If they liked seeing Edward Scissorhands, they might discover other lesser-known Burton works like Big Fish, Dumbo, Frankenweenie, or Big Eyes. If they happened upon Ari Aster’s film Midsomar in the past, they might be tempted to watch his other films, like Hereditary or Beau. Or having been amazed by Florence Pugh’s performance in Midsomar,they might be tempted to check out Little Women, The Wonder, Don’t Worry, Darling, or even the recently released Oppenheimer.
In short, the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes might have a silver lining—at least for the viewer. Forced out of their comfort zone of big-studio action-packed explosion-ridden joyrides masquerading as cinema, or live-action remakes animated classics, young audiences might finally get to see what they’ve been missing. They might discover vintage directors like Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Francois Truffaut, John Ford or the the performances of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, or Jack Lemmon. They might discover beautiful films like Children of Paradise or The 400 Blows.
Not to say the strike is a good thing. Thousands of people are, or will be, out of work. If it drags on for months and new productions are shelved, viewers will not be the only ones affected. The movie industry’s satellite industries will be hurt, as will the hundreds of theater workers across the country. Yet a pause in the onslaught of cookie-cutter studio movies, sequels, and remakes might create a renewed interest in classic and independent cinema.
As Albert Einstein said, “In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.” This could be a chance for audiences to take a step back and get a broader view of what films are, what they have been, and what they might be.