10 November to 3 December 2020 - Justified Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6

In the weeks and months after my role at an advertising agency had been made redundant back in 2016 I made it a point of principle not to fall into the trap of browsing Netflix (or Amazon Prime) from the moment Manon left the house for work until it was time to collect Coco from school. Of course I did watch things on Netflix and Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer and YouTube, but not all day long. And I definitely didn't talk about what I was watching, keeping quiet when Whatsapp chat turned to personal reviews or recommendations of what to watch. I’m better than that, I thought vaingloriously, remembering William Gibson’s prescient observation of folk who 'sat around accessing media all day and talking about it, and nothing ever seemed to get done'.

Of course there was no shame in losing oneself in TV during lockdown, but old habits died hard and I was still loathe to participate in our Whatsapp group’s text based version of Gogglebox. And I was keeping myself occupied and stimulated, especially during the first few months. I was up early to take my place in the soviet style queues that snaked out of the door of Waitrose and around the corner of Tollington Road, sometimes almost as far as the gates of the car park! Then I had the running, the home schooling and the cooking to take care of, not to forget the Amazon ordering and mid-level panic attacks.

June probably watched more than anyone else in the family - Isaac and Coco were (and still are) gamers, Manon had her work and I was trying to maintain some level of discipline - but inevitably and unsurprisingly we all spent more time streaming TV than at any other period of our lives. Amazon has been tracking our prime video viewing habits since 2015. 30% of all our Amazon Prime Video viewing happened during the pandemic, 15 days worth of shows alongside all of the other stuff we were watching on other services.

As the weeks and months wore on and especially as the evenings grew dark my resolve weakened and in the afternoons, while Manon talked to American colleagues in her office downstairs, I could be found lying on our bed propped up by pillows, alternately napping and watching something on Amazon or Netflix or Disney+, a recent addition to our media arsenal.

It was rarely educational, uplifting or highbrow viewing - Manon thinks I have the film taste of a teenage boy and I’d probably agree, adding that most adult men share my tastes and most of those who say they don’t are lying. If Manon knew that I largely resubscribed to Amazon Prime to watch the second series of Reacher she would question her choice of life partner. This is why what I watch is no-one’s business but my own.

By November I’d watched every episode of Seinfeld for the second time, every Jason Statham film available on every streaming network, three of five seasons of Friday Night Lights and had smashed through the Olympus, London and Angel Has Fallen trilogy (though I feel they jumped the shark when they introduced Nick Nolte as Banning’s estranged father).

And then, tempted by its origins in an Elmore Leonard novel and drawn in by its southern gothic vibes, I discovered Justified. In the 21 day period between 10 November and 3 December I watched all 78 episodes, the entire six series run. According to Amazon (which measures viewing time down to thousandths of a second) I spent fifty seven hours watching Justified which seems like a lot, and is a lot! But then again it was lockdown and I’d finished all the puzzles.