Netflicks: Conceptual Television in the Streaming Era

The dead have risen and destroyed the world as we know it. A religious fundamentalist government has taken over America and enslaved the female populace. A woman wakes each morning and is forced to relive the same day, caught in a time loop. In a secret laboratory, soldiers are given an experimental drug to remove traumatic memories so they can be sent back to war more quickly.

These outlandish scenarios are now quite familiar to us. We recognise them as the plots of some of our most loved shows and films. In this book, these situations are treated seriously for what they tell us about the world we are experiencing. In Netflicks Tony Hughes-d’Aeth explains that screen dramas are a form of thought and that the streaming era has inaugurated a new kind of television—conceptual television.

This book analyses contemporary streamed dramas as symptoms of the digital age. The four main concepts that are discussed are dystopia, amnesia, repetition (time loop), and dissociation (divided or split world).