One of the things that I did as a result of the early lockdown panic was that I started religiously following the news; News at 10, Newsnight, random corona updates, etc. I knew almost as much as my mother about what was going on, and from the looks of it at the time considerably more than our Tory Government. It didn’t last long as I got bored by week 2 when the novelty wore off and I started accepting the lockdown, but at least for the first week and a half I was well informed.

The decline in news watching was also directly correlated to a sharp rise in crappy reality TV show watching on Netflix. Stefania and Salma were partially to blame for that- they encouraged me to watch “Love is Blind”; a show where contestants in America get engaged just from speaking to each other without ever meeting. SPOILER ALERT; two couples even got married and were apparently still married a year later. Quality TV as you can imagine, and it was all downhill from there.

At least I watched that one over a few days, as I started on a Monday evening, and still had to work during the week. However, a nice new past time I have picked up and have eagerly encouraged my fellow flatmates to participate in is the “Saturday mega binge”. We all drink a lot on Friday night (more on that in another blog), then we are usually hungover on Saturday and decide to watch a whole show from start to finish. I think our current record stands at about 8 hours of watching the same show in a row.

Highlights include Salma and I watching “Too Hot to Handle” (another dating reality TV one but just a bit more explicit). Miguel sat out of that one. All three of us mega binged on “The Tiger King” (that one was a bit insane, I had to check Miguel hadn’t spiked my drink and I wasn’t hallucinating). And Miguel and I (you can see there is one common participant here) re-watched the amazing BBC show “The Night Manager” which features Salma’s dad. It’s a great show, but I had seen it originally before I met Salma, so I was watching purely for the chance to see Salma’s dad on TV. It’s pretty exciting when you live with the daughter of a famous actor.

I eagerly watched every minute of every scene to make sure I caught him, but the whole show is basically set in the Middle East so there were a lot of Iranian-looking men on screen and he only appears 6 and a half hours in. It was well worth it though, as in the end he was the most bad-ass character in the whole show. That’s the kind of people we roll with these days…(disclaimer: we haven’t actually met him yet, but I feel like we know him through Salma).

The Netflix-a-thon was at its peak for the first few weeks. The first thing I did was obviously watch every crime, murder, drug, rape etc. documentary – particularly those related to the Innocence Project in the US which investigates convicts who were wrongfully convicted. I LOVE those. Once I’d ran out of those on Netflix, I started watching Netflix occasionally, like a normal person, and doing other things with my life.

I have no idea why I’m so obsessed with crime documentaries and murder mysteries – it’s an obsession I’ve carried since my childhood and one I share with my dad. In fact, I think 90% of our father daughter bonding time revolves around murder (watching it not committing it). I realise that makes my dad and I sound mega creepy, and I also realise the irony of us being Serbian and seemingly obsessed with murder, but I can assure you it stems from a love of mystery and investigation, not a love of homicide (at least I speak for myself, I’ve never been too sure what my dad is doing when he comes home late covered in blood). Again, that was a joke. Moving swiftly on….

Another amazing investment we made was to acquire Disney Plus. It was recommended by my super manly (NAAAAAT!) friend Josh who you may remember from the South Africa blog. He claimed it was a great investment. I then recommended it to Miguel who didn’t believe it was recommended by Josh. “Is this a joke? As in Disney the cartoons?” When I confronted Josh about it, he tried to make it sound like his girlfriend made him do it and then pulled out the even more ridiculous excuse that he got it to watch the National Geographic shows. Yeah right. There are hundreds of Disney shows on there and like 5 National Geographic documentaries. Ain’t nobody subscribe to the Disney channel to watch anything other than Disney.

The funniest thing though was Miguel’s behaviour. When I told him that we’re getting it he pulled the kind of face he usually does when I get mega excited about something which he is dreading, but knows he’s going to get dragged into it anyway. We all know that face. So, I decided to watch it alone.

One day while he was on his laptop, I put Snow White on. As the movie was going on, I would catch him watching out of the corner of his eye. Then, every now and then, when the dwarfs would do something cute or funny, he would start laughing. Like actually laughing out loud. I mean, I am a mega Disney fan, but it takes a lot to get me to laugh out loud at a Disney movie. By the end of the film Miguel was totally invested, had put down his laptop and was intensely following every scene. The next evening as we sat down to watch a quick show before bedtime, I asked him what he wanted to watch, to which he eagerly replied, “What about Dumbo?”

But the one thing that Miguel has watched the most this whole period without a shadow of a doubt is TV Quiz shows. Those of you who know him well will know about his (verging on unhealthy) addiction with the show The Chase. This began a long time ago, I even bought him the family board game version of it for Christmas, which we regularly play ourselves and have got half our friends and family invested in.

During the corona period he managed to finalise his analysis of the show- a daily tracker of decisions made by contestants and the probabilities/statistics backing up why 90% of the contestants make the wrong decision. I know what you’re thinking, I’m a lucky girl. He is now brainstorming how to make money out of his analysis – perhaps sell it to The Chase themselves?! If you’re interested, let me know.

One time he was watching TV and heating something up in the microwave. Now the microwave is in the same room as the TV, about three metres away from the sofa. To put it into perspective, if you were watching a show and had to get something from the microwave, you would have to avert your eyes from the TV for about one and a half seconds (and you’d still hear the audio perfectly.) When the microwave was done, he let it beep about 7 times before he went to collect it. I mean beep ten seconds, pause 30 seconds, beep again ten seconds, pause again 30 seconds, etc. I almost got up from the bedroom next door to come and shut the bloody thing up. When I asked him why it took him so long to open the microwave door, he looked at me with this ‘isn’t it obvious?’ look and shrugged “I was watching The Chase”.

But corona is a time of innovation, growth and development so he’s now expanded to 20-year-old shows of “Who wants to be a millionaire”. That one he gets really excited about. Don’t get me wrong, I love them too, just not quite with the same zeal with which he does. Last week he announced to the flat that “I think lockdown has made me love TV even more.”

The thing is staying at home and chilling out is kind of his thing. I won’t go so far as to say he’s living his best life these days, but we did do a corona quiz the other day and his answer to “What will be the first thing you do after corona?” was “I might chill out at home for a bit.”