We live in a digital age.
I promise you that will be the first and last cliche you will read here.
But in all seriousness, the internet has rapidly transformed our consumption of media. Gone are the days of 4 channels on the TV. No longer do kids have to settle for Disney Channel or Nickelodeon when they get home from school. Primetime shows from the major networks aren’t always the topic of water-cooler conversation the next day at the office.
When early original content like Netflix’s House of Cards or HBO’s Game of Thrones became popular in the early 2010s, there was no telling how the streaming industry would react. To many people this was a fluke; occasionally a hit would be produced by a streaming service but the best shows were always broadcasted first. I still remember seeing the little “Netflix Original” icon on a show and immediately assuming it was cheap, poorly made, or too eclectic to be good. Flash forward to today and I now look to original content first because I know and trust the brands behind it.
The beauty of content made directly for streaming is found in the little things, like how the length and number of episodes tend to be adapted to fit the storyline as opposed to the other way around (where commercial time and scheduling forces writers to craft a narrative around 50 car ads). Even the fact that characters are allowed to engage in whatever their version of sex, drugs, and rock and roll is is unique to this form of content. The streaming giants aren’t barred by the same restrictive rules as network TV. They’re free to let their characters drop the occasional F-bomb when they’re angry, or act in adult ways when the story calls for it.
What’s most important about “made for streaming” content as a genre, however, is the fact that it can tackle real issues through storytelling. TV has always been seen as a relatively low brow form of media. Novels had depth and worldliness, the theater had the convention of human emotion, and cinema worked as this magical fusion between the wonderous possibilities of novels and the human impact of the theater.
What I think has happened today is a revolution in television. I think that streaming content has invented a new degree of “sophistication” in media: midbrow. It’s not classy melodramatic highbrow content, but it’s also not sophomoric lowbrow content either. Instead, these shows combine the great production and writing of highbrow with the human experience of lowbrow to form this new thing. I’ve decided to call it midbrow, which is also what I’m naming this blog.
As I post to this blog every week I’ll take a look at some of the most popular midbrow shows from the most popular streaming platforms. I’ll discuss them, share my recommendations, and then focus on what I feel are some of the most culturally relevant themes. From the portrayal of women in Amazon Prime’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel to the witty and yet educational content of Netflix’s Big Mouth and Sex Education, we’ll tackle it all; one midbrow at a time.
Midbrow 