The arrival tonight of Showtime’s The Affair, perhaps the year’s best new drama, is great news for fans of quality TV. But it’s one more hour of great TV, on a night with so many already…
Don’t get me wrong. I understand this is a “good news” problem. I also understand that, thanks to TV On Demand, DVRs and other time-shifting opportunities, thinking of “nights” and “schedules,” when it comes to watching television, is kind of old-fashioned.
But I also know, according to the Nielsen ratings, there are, literally, millions of people who, like myself, continue to watch television in real time. And who, when a favorite show is on the schedule, make an effort to be there to watch it as it unfurls, to enjoy it at the first opportunity.
Tonight (Oct. 12), because I’m a TV critic, I have a decided advantage. I’ve already seen the series premiere of Showtime’s The Affair, which begins at 10 p.m. ET. And loved it.
Similarly, I’ve seen, in advance, tonight’s Season 5 premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead (left), a spectacularly exciting and dramatic hour of television. And, for that matter, tonight’s episode of Showtime’s Homeland, another hour of TV that’s really, really excellent.
Both of those shows – The Walking Dead and Homeland – are on at the same time: 9 p.m. ET. And it’s the same hour at which other drama shows on my weekly must-watch list – shows which I no longer have advance episodes on tap – are televised. Namely, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, which last week served up yet another intensely memorable hour – and CBS’s The Good Wife, which last week presented an episode that knocked me out with its intelligence, ingenuity and unpredictability.
Without access to advance previews, that would be four of TV’s best shows – The Walking Dead, Boardwalk Empire, The Good Wife and Homeland – all competing for attention at the same hour of prime time. And since I’m a sports fan, let’s also add two events that, to enjoy them fully, have to be seen live, in real time: Fox Sports 1’s 8 p.m. ET of Game 2 of the National League Championship series between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants, and NBC’s Sunday Night Football matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants.
And that’s not to mention 60 Minutes on CBS at 7 p.m. ET, or Fox’s The Simpsons at 8 p.m. ET, or TCM’s telecasts of Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity (right) at 5:15 p.m. ET and Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt at 8 ET. Oh, and Sundance Channel is showing Roman Polanski’s brilliant Chinatown at 10 p.m. ET.
That’s not a night’s worth of quality television. It’s closer to a week’s…