The summer of 2024 was supposed to be a blockbuster season for TV. After a two-year wait, Ryan Condal’s barnstorming Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon , was coming back to screens for a fiery second season. The Bear , Christopher Storer’s beloved culinary saga, was returning, too, after an exemplary second installment.
And then there was also the next Polin-focused helping of Bridgerton , the fourth outing for Emily in Paris , and a string of brand-new releases, from Queenie to Becoming Karl Lagerfeld . But what was billed as a cancel-all-your-plans-and-hunker-down sort of summer has turned out to be a bit of a damp squib, televisually. And as a result, I’ve found myself watching most, if not all, of these shows ambiently.
I watched The Bear while cooking. I (sorry) nodded off slightly during slower portions of House of the Dragon. (Daemon’s extended, vision-filled stay at Harrenhal, I’m looking at you.
) I did the washing up while watching Bridgerton . I did my nails while watching Emily in Paris . In some cases, I actually don’t mind—I almost prefer it.
That’s certainly how I feel about shows which, in my opinion, are designed to be consumed ambiently; shows that are inherently soothing and reliably unchallenging. For instance, did I thoroughly enjoy watching Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope and Luke Newton’s Colin finally get their happy ending in Season 3 of Bridgerton ? Of course. But did I also watch most of that season while tidying my apartment? Yes.
I also have a vivid memory of watching that first, six-minute sex scene on a late night during a girls’ trip to Madrid on which my four friends and I all sat chatting and scrolling on our phones for the duration of the episode. It was incredibly relaxing and, most importantly, fun to be able to catch up and look at memes while also watching a show and knowing you probably wouldn’t be missing anything that important. After all, was that happy ending ever really in doubt? Then there’s Emily in Paris , which is the literal definition of delightful, frothy, ambient TV—a show I love and always depend on to be exactly and unapologetically what it is.
As Emily Cooper chose between Gabriel and Alfie and spearheaded various unhinged marketing campaigns in the first half of Season 4, I did a partial wardrobe clear-out, replied to texts, and wrote birthday cards for friends. And I loved every second of it. Why, I wondered, did I so enjoy bingeing these shows ambiently? Well, firstly, it’s no secret that with social media, the endless news cycle, the perpetual anxiety we’ve all been living with since COVID, and everything else, our attention spans are pretty much nonexistent.
It also goes without saying that there are a lot of terrible things happening in the world right now, from the ongoing atrocities in Palestine, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the recent rise of far-right demonstrations across the UK and the threat of a second Trump presidency. When you’re bombarded by news alerts about all those things and feeling overwhelmed, there is some comfort, however brief, to be found in temporarily switching off your brain and watching a parade of beautiful people walking around a picturesque city dressed in colorful clothes,= while also doing launtry/leafing through a magazine/replying to emails. This is also why, I suspect, so many of my colleagues are currently in the midst of rewatches, devouring back-to-back episodes of Desperate Housewives and the original Gossip Girl —shows that feel familiar calming, reminding us of a (slightly) simpler time.
There’s also something to be said about our (my) obsession with productivity. I know I’ll feel better if I’ve made a vague dent in my to-do list—a bit of vacuuming, hand-washing a sweater, cleaning the fridge—while watching something rather than (shudder) have wasted four hours sitting in one spot and bingeing something mindlessly on a slow Sunday afternoon. I decided, after much thought, that this current habit is the millennial and Gen-Z equivalent of our parents’ tendency to keep the TV on in the background—no one’s exactly sure why it’s on, but it does feel oddly reassuring.
It seems different in the era of streaming because we’re actively choosing to put on these shows, but the function is the same. It’s an entirely different story, however, when it comes to shows that are decidedly not designed for ambient viewing. Take The Bear , a show that completely floored me with its second season and the incomparable one-two punch of “Fishes” and “Forks.
” But then came a languid third season where nothing much happened. It took me three attempts to watch the first episode alone (I kept falling asleep), after which I decided that I should finish the season, just so that I’d know what happened, but knew that I could only manage it if I were doing something else more engaging at the same time. So I powered through while peeling potatoes, packing my lunchbox, and making grocery lists, occasionally rewinding scenes when I didn’t quite catch the rat-a-tat dialogue.
The 10 episodes ranged from forgettable at best to excruciatingly boring at worst. (An exception must, however, be made for the Ayo Edebiri-directed “Napkins,” centered on Liza Colón-Zayas’s Tina, which is excellent.) While the likes of Bridgerton and Emily in Paris left me in a zen-like state, I found even ambiently watching The Bear extremely draining.
I felt the same frustration and profound disappointment with House of the Dragon . After a 20-month hiatus, I was desperate for more jaw-dropping dragon battles and delicious palace intrigue—but after a first season which mostly set the stage for the epic civil war to come, the second installment continued dragging its feet. It had a strong start and, later, a couple of memorable sequences, but also included stretches of nothingness as Rhaenyra struggled to settle on a plan of action, Alicent sulked, Daemon stumbled around a castle having weird dreams, a slew of illegitimate Targaryens were given backstories I didn’t care about, and random factions had disputes that threatened to send me to sleep.
Once again, I kept watching because I felt like I should, but I did so while replying to DMs and doing some summer vacation planning. It was a real endurance test. Why, exactly, these previously critically lauded prestige-TV fixtures have become unintentionally ambient is anyone’s guess, though I suspect it’s because both The Bear and House of the Dragon are in their middle seasons, with additional installments already confirmed.
Knowing that an explosive conclusion is somewhere on the horizon means there’s less pressure to deliver, resulting in sleepier seasons which, in both of these cases, go nowhere. By mid-August, I’d reached a crisis point. Did I have some form of attention deficit disorder? Was I now destined to watch everything ambiently? As it turns out, no.
It was then that I started watching the screeners I’d received for the third season of Industry , the heart-pumping banking drama on Max. Like everything else I’d streamed over the past few months, I began watching it while doing busywork. But then I found myself putting down my phone, abandoning my dirty dishes, and actually sitting down, my eyes glued to the screen.
After a first season which I thought was almost faultless and a second which I found less engrossing, this third installment, though far from perfect, is gripping television. And it was proof that, even when we live in a world with countless distractions, when a TV show is really, truly good, it momentarily feels like nothing else matters. So, here’s to the end of this summer of ambient TV, with the hope that fall will bring a wealth of shows that keep me completely and hopelessly engaged—except Emily in Paris Season 4, part two, of course, which I fully expect to watch while folding clothes, as intended .
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