Donald Clarke: Will we ever again have a ‘Who shot JR?’ moment? Shut up, you dull idiot

For a good part of this almost extinct year I have been urging folk to watch For All Mankind on Apple TV+. This is the show that imagines what would have become of the US space programme if the Russians had got to the moon first. They set up moon bases. They go to Mars. Women end up running much of the show. It’s great. Watch the damn thing.

Or don’t. You may have the entire series of the BBC’s Sherwood recorded. Someone told you that The Great – that zippy period thing with Elle Fanning – on Channel 4 is worth staying with. You still haven’t finished The White Lotus, Yellowjackets or House of the Dragon. Heck, you’ve barely heard of half the shows on these 2022 best-of lists.

Then there are all the films you haven’t seen. There was that Athena thing the critics argued over at Venice. Triangle of Sadness is now available to rent online. That sounds interesting. Is Prey, that action flick on Disney+, really as much fun as they say? It will take you until Easter to catch up with all the releases recommended in bumper “Farewell 2022″ supplements.

It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. But, in this regard, it is mostly the best of times. Having too much readily available culture is surely among the least of our current worries. If you offered this cornucopia to any child stuck with one channel in the Ireland of 1976 they’d have clawed your arm off in gratitude. They were watching Mart and Market. They were watching black-and-white Czechoslovakian cartoons. If RTÉ broadcast random images of goats to the accompaniment of avant garde jazz they would have watched that too.

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Let us not get carried away. You can’t find everything at the touch of a button. The availability of films released before the 1970s – despite decent rental options via the likes of Google Play and Apple – still lags behind that of more recent movies. Films not in the English language are in even shorter supply here. But, if you can afford a satellite service, a handful of subscriptions and enough for the odd rental, then a huge swathe of recent film and TV is at your disposal. (Many are, sadly, not that comfortably off, but this is an argument about potentials.)

The audio available on services such as Spotify and Apple Music really does border on the exhaustive. There are moral arguments here concerning limited remuneration to artists, but anyone wishing to stay abreast of an extraordinarily fecund era for new music needs only a handheld device, an internet connection and the price of a six-pack each month. Apparently, a packet of cigs now costs about €15. Did you know that?

Where was I? Audio streaming has opened up new worlds to those who, only a few years ago, would have stubbornly remained in their lane. Intrigued by talk of new jazz in 2022 by the likes of Makaya McCraven or Mary Halvorson? Dip in. It will cost you nothing extra. At the other end, not convinced, as a middle-aged rock bore, by the argument that Harry Styles or Carly Rae Jepsen are delivering new pop classics? Nobody will see you tentatively listening under cover of darkness. If the music takes hold you can buy the CDs and give the obscure artists a boost or help the established ones towards another Maserati. (I’m doing my best here for you, guys.)

Yet the saddo argument that we are losing a binding monoculture is not entirely without substance. Just a few short decades ago, when we were enjoying only a limited number of films and TV shows – and when much of that was available only for a short time – the next-day chatter was more of a unifying force. Now everyone is off in their own cyberspace exploring individual interests. Somebody even more boring than me is wondering if we will ever again have a “Who shot JR?” moment.

Shut up, imaginary dull idiot. Reality TV does still give us such unifying moments. Dear old film can manage it too. The 2023 movie preview published in The Irish Times today will point you towards a date already taking on semi-sacred status. On July 21st you can catch both Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Both ends of the spectrum look to be covered without anybody sinking to a sequel. The trailer to Gerwig’s take on the Mattel toy, co-written with her equally highbrow romantic partner Noah Baumbach, suggests something bright, absurd and sugar-rushed. The promo for Nolan’s biopic of J Robert Oppenheimer, featuring Cillian Murphy as the father of the atomic bomb, points to something sombre, apocalyptic and weighty. Memes setting one against the other are already everywhere. The monoculture is not dead yet. Or do I mean duoculture?