It’s official: cheap, violent thrills are out; detailed trade negotiations are in. Shōgun’s Emmy-winning haul suggests cerebral viewing is back in vogueA friend who works in TV explained to me once how Game of Thrones had ruined our attention spans, packing in too much event. Dragons, nakedness, intrigue, gore – ooh, new place, where are we again? – monsters, weather, foreboding, jousts … as much went on in any given five minutes as would normally sustain a show for a whole season. Relatedly, the rest of television felt unbearably slow. Perfectly good dramas were all of a sudden like eating bran or taking medicine. “How in God’s name are those two adversaries still conversing?” you’d think, watching, I don’t know, House of Cards. “Why can’t one of them simply melt a cauldron of gold and use it to drown the other?”For a long time, GoT didn’t just win some Emmys, it won all of them. Starting with Peter Dinklage, who won best supporting actor in 2011, more or less everyone in it was best supporting something. It was the outstanding drama, but also had the best sound, the best credits, the best prosthetics; it was the best sci-fi/fantasy. By 2016, it was the most Emmy-decorated show in history. It was almost as if that august awards body were surrendering to a new normal: that’s what box sets are now – an immense amount of stuff must occur; nothing less will do.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...