A golden age for TV?

Technology advanced from fiddly video recorders to Sky+, the box set became boss, and RTÉ produced consistent quality, writes SHANE HEGARTY

A DECADE AGO, recording a programme required work. Either you waited long enough for it to come back around in the form of a repeat, or you engaged in some meticulous planning involving a video recorder. This would mean finding a blank tape, or skimming through several of them to decide which ones to tape over. In the western world of the late 20th century, an extraordinary amount of time was spent discussing such quandaries as "we should keep Live Aid, but are we really going to watch the Birds of a FeatherChristmas special again?"

Then you would attempt to set the video recorder – a task of such complexity it became one of our culture's most famous running jokes. Then you would return later only to find that the episode of Inspector Morsehad started late and your recording had finished 10 minutes before the denouement. It was a frustrating age.

Some people are still using video recorders. That’s obvious from those Video Plus numbers that litter the TV schedules. But that it became yesterday’s technology was firmly underlined by the decision by Dixons, in 2004, to no longer stock blank video tapes.

Instead, this is the age of Sky+, whose ads featured Kelly Brook, allowing her persona to emphasise the fact that if she can figure this out, you can too.

This is the age of the box set. Never in the history of TV had people deliberately avoided watching a series in the way they do now: block-booking a weekend, pulling the curtains, putting the Chinese on a speed dial and settling in for an entire series of Prison Break.

It’s also the age of the internet. If you missed something, or it’s not going to be shown here for a while, you can download it. There are a great deal of people doing this when, by law, they’re not supposed to.

It is among the reasons why, for example, RTÉ plays the latest episodes of Lostalmost immediately after they air in the US. And it is why it seems so ludicrous that Channel 4 still holds Desperate Housewivesin a vault for several months. But the recent advent of RTÉ's Player (our local version of the BBC's iPlayer and Channel 4's 4OD) centralised and legitimised the trend here. Already, the physical box set is on the verge of being an anachronism.

We should probably talk about what we were watching, instead of how we were watching it. It was, after all, a decent age for TV. It was arguably a golden one for RTÉ, which produced consistent quality for much of the decade – epitomised by its sudden ability to make decent comedy.

At a time when television has become atomised, RTÉ emphasised its relevance. Sure, it came in for savage stick at times, and revenue difficulties could yet mean that the decade will long be a high-water mark. But on the whole it’s had a fine run.

We must acknowledge Big Brother, which began in 2000 and will end in 2010, so offering itself up as a defining show of the decade. And it was in many ways, even if it was only a sudden leap in evolution for a medium and culture that had been gradually heading towards a point where television was everywhere and anyone could be a celebrity.

And no review of the decade is allowed be printed without an acknowledgment of the influence of The Sopranosin encouraging "novelistic" drama series of extraordinary quality. It was The Best Television Series Ever Made. At least until The Wirecame along.

But how did most people see The Wire? Not on television, at an appointed time, but by box set. This drama, more than any other, emphasised the sea change in viewing habits. Yes, families gather around the set together to watch The X Factor. RTÉ had two million tune in for the Ireland-France soccer match last month. But the decade was not just about what we watched, but how we watched it.