Remotely: Travels in the Binge of TV

A leading film critic on the evolving world of streaming media and its impact on society

The city at night under lockdown, a time of plague and anxiety. It is an exciting new age of television, the light that flutters in every cell in the city. But no one seems to be asking: What is the endless stream doing to us?

In Remotely, the most innovative writer on film and screens asks what happened to us as we sought consolation under lockdown by becoming a society of bingeing creatures. From Candid Camera and I Love Lucy to Ozark, Succession, and Chernobyl, David Thomson and his wife, Lucy Gray, wander through shows old and new, trying to pin down the nature and justification for what we call "entertainment." Funny, mysterious, and warm, at last here is a book that grasps the extent to which television is not just a collection of particular shows--hits and misses--but a weather system in which we are lost pilgrims searching for answers.

Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 01/23/2024
Pages: 280
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.49h x 6.44w x 0.81d
ISBN: 9780300261004


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/13/2023
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2023
Library Journal 01/01/2024 pg. 71

About the Author
David Thomson is a film critic, a historian, and the author of more than thirty books, including Disaster Mon Amour, Why Acting Matters, and The Biographical Dictionary of Film. He lives in San Francisco, CA.