The psychology of comfort TV: Why quarantined viewers are seeking the familiar and formulaic

The Atlantic

"Apologies, new shows, but bleak times call for comfort television: familiar, pacifying, predictable episodes of 1990s sitcoms, crime procedurals, and cooking contests," says Sophie Gilbert. "I don’t want active emotional engagement, or intricate plotting, or even particularly well-crafted performances. I want David Tennant frowning ominously and slurring several extra syllables into the word Miller. I want grandmotherly math teachers constructing full dollhouses out of pâté sucrée and fondant. Most of all, if I’m going to be inside for several months, I want regular access to Frasier’s apartment. Comfort TV, at this point, is such a well-worn idea that it’s spawned countless lists over the past few weeks, all guiding viewers toward low-investment, high-reward shows such as Schitt’s Creek, Parks and Recreation, and Bones. On Twitter, people have posted their own lists, heavy on decades-old sitcoms (Seinfeld, Cheers, The Golden Girls), teen-oriented dramas (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars), and gloomy network staples (Law & Order: SVU, The Twilight Zone). Apart from the fact that almost all of these shows are old and reassuringly familiar, they don’t have much in common. This isn’t as strange as it might seem: People cope with trauma and anxiety in very different ways, which makes the shows they turn to for comfort equally incongruous and dependent on the emotional response they’re hoping to provoke. In any given moment, one woman’s palliative might be another’s saccharine TV toothache." Newer, contemporary shows are at a disadvantage during these anxious times because "with all the prestige TV out there, I think a lot of the narratives that we’re used to seeing have been turned on their heads a lot," adds Elizabeth Cohen, a professor of media psychology at West Virginia University. “When you turn on an episode of Law & Order, you know exactly what you’re going to get. Is the story different every time? It is, but it’s not … I think it’s important that there are still places people can get that sense of security.”

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