Streaming: »Re-Watching«: Looking for that warm feeling

The world out there is confusing, complicated, confusing. Hundreds of disasters, crises, conflicts at the same time. Plus millions and millions of private fears, worries and needs that you would like to escape from at least for a moment on the sofa. So: turn on the computer, turn on the series, and your little escape into the fictional, called escapism, is ready. If only it were that easy, because there is so much!

Netflix alone, by far the most streamed portal, published 165 new series plus 81 follow-up seasons of old series last year. A good double of Prime, Disney, Apple and German services like RTL+ and Joyn combined. A maelstrom of new releases and yet just one filing cabinet among many in the digital archive of all streaming services since Netflix invented the flat rate for video-on-demand almost exactly 25 years ago.

What sounds like a paradise of unlimited choices is increasingly becoming overwhelming. It in turn leads to escape reflexes into yesterday. And as usual in pop culture, there has long been a technical term for this: “Re-Watch”. The trend is to watch old or used programs again instead of trying fresh ones. This, says psychology professor Sabrina Romanoff from New York’s Yeshiva University, “can save us from the stress of endless choice and the resulting loss of energy.”

However, the reunion in the literal sense does not only counteract the stress of the first broadcast and is therefore the subject of scientific studies. The main reason to try again (and again and again) with the old series love: feelings! We rewatch what we liked, engaged and moved us during the first, second and fifth series. Which leads to the second main driver of private revivals: nostalgia.

From A for “A-Team” to Z for “Zum Blauen Bock”, the time jump works with almost every TV format of the day, depending on the age cohort and stage of life. It doesn’t matter that the old works, like some overrated “crime scenes” from the 1970s, have often aged poorly. What people who revel in history, those who are allergic to the present and those who are skeptical of the future are looking for in the vaults of their audiovisual past is not necessarily quality, but rather the warm feeling of security under the spell of familiar figures. American behavioral scientist Daniel Lieberman knows that we form “parasocial relationships” with them and “experience feelings that are similar to those we feel toward friends.”

Because true friendships are not necessarily easier to maintain on screen than in front of it, loyal series fans check back more often. And although the relationships naturally remain one-sided, the illusion of one’s own influence grows. Psychology speaks of the “Conjuring Effect,” which conjures up illusions for us. He gives us the illusion of control over the action if we know how it works. No wonder that the beloved “Gilmore Girls” was the ninth most-watched series in 2023 with 38 billion broadcast minutes in the USA, even though the series finale was broadcast in 2007.

Three years after the end of the sitcom, which, according to a ranking by the media service provider Bloomberg, placed behind “Grey’s Anatomy” and even has the close relationship with the audience in the title: “Friends”. TV friendship must be nice! There are also self-deprecating reasons for re-watching. That’s why quite a few people occasionally watch the 1,758 episodes of “Lindenstraße” on ARD Plus, which was canceled in 2020, in order to smile at the boring, brittle school theater in 1985. But seeing each other again isn’t just fun.

In times of horizontal serial complexes, laziness in thinking and acting are also paths into the familiar. Next exit is pragmatism. For example, for ironing out wrinkled fabrics. Because the sequel to “House of the Dragon” is more dramaturgically knotted than all the threads of all the telenovelas put together, three dozen cabals and wars can only be understood if you watch the last episode of the first season again. Or who understood in 2015 what the “Many-faced God” was doing in “Game of Thrones” and how “Sherlock” solved the Reichenbach Falls three years earlier?

Seeing each other again isn’t just a joy. Sometimes, as old virus thrillers such as “Containment” or “Sløborn” suggest during the Covid pandemic, Re-Watch refreshes outdated half-knowledge. Furthermore, people who don’t know a foreign language only dare to watch the original with subtitles after the dubbed version. And when it comes time to travel to California, even late-born people may hit the “streets of San Francisco” at Free Vee to feel 50 years of city change. Free, by the way.

Which brings us to availability. In the past there were only two regular routes to individual film history. The expensive one led from the analogue to the digital department store in order to buy DVD boxes in batches. The free program has so far relied on repetitions called “Re-Run” in the regular program, where Pro Sieben fills half days with “How I Met Your Mother”, while the 349th exhumation of “Sissi” is one of the television rituals at Christmas like Carp Blue once was . If you don’t want to wait so long for the nostalgic escape from reality and steam back to the eighties on a “dream ship”, the ZDF media library offers 25 cruises from the first 14 years. And if you’re more interested in the GDR model, you can find it at Amazon, Apple or Magenta.

Re-watching doesn’t require such long intervals. ARD and ZDF are currently putting numerous European Football Championship games online. The full-length canned games are called “Re-Life”. And if you don’t like football, you can watch the first three parts on Netflix as a warm-up to the sequel to “Beverly Hills Cop”. There are many individual reasons for this. Most are nostalgic in nature.

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