Netflix hit series Emily in Paris has been panned for being so unrealistic. But that’s the point because haven’t we had enough realism in the past two years, Kerry Parnell asks.
Why do we find it so hard to praise happy TV? This week Netflix announced its smash-hit show Emily in Paris has been renewed for a further two seasons.
This was met with predictable derision on social media over the popular series starring Lily Collins as a young American marketing executive living it — yes — preposterously large, in the City of Love.
The show, which raked in 58 million viewers in its first month when it debuted in 2020, has proved divisive over its two seasons, as critics “hate-watched” it and pooh-poohed the light-hearted script as being unrealistic. Er, yes, it’s unrealistic, that’s the point.
Who wants realism? I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough realism over the past two years and escaping for half an hour into a world of designer clothes, crispy croissants and an endless line of handsome men falling in love with our hapless heroine is exactly the kind of viewing I want right now. It’s the ultimate panacea to the pandemic and I am not masking my affection.
It’s chic, silly and self-deprecating and does not pretend to be anything other than the romantic romp it is, which many critics seem to miss.
When it debuted, The New Yorker famously ran a comment piece snottily labelling it “ambient TV”, the equivalent of elevator music, designed to run in the background whilst scrolling on your phone, or cooking dinner.
But slagging off something like Emily in Paris is like slagging off the Paddington movies for unrealistic representations of Peruvian bears. It’s just snobbery. It’s too easy to be critical of happy, light, content, dismissing it as fluff, or “silly women’s stuff”.
I put it to you there’s more craft involved making something heart-warming and funny than there is knocking out another noir cop show where everything is shot in sludge brown, with a cliched plot about a dysfunctional, divorced detective with a drinking problem, who solves a grisly murder of a young girl.
Kate Winslet won a Golden Globe this week for just that, in Mare of Easttown. No offence to Kate, who did a good job, but why was Lily Collins derided when she was nominated for a Golden Globe for Emily, while Kate garnered reverent applause for Mare?
And is it any worse than some of the absolutely dire “crunchy-punching” TV shows and movies which seem to proliferate streaming services at the moment? This genre of “man TV” involves blokes repeatedly walloping each other, accompanied by a noise I can only think is the sound-effects man smashing a bag of Twisties.
I had the misfortune of watching one of these by mistake recently, called Avengement, with Nick Moran, which was effectively one long fight, where the only thing that alternated was the weaponry used. This classic of the genre enjoys the same approval-rating online as Emily in Paris.
That is about as far from ambient TV as you can get and I’d suggest all those biffos are much worse for you. At least the only pain in Emily in Paris comes from the boulangerie. And like chocolate croissants, it’s irresistible.
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