THIS year’s Top 10 Serial TV Series unfolds against a background of continually rising inequality as Thomas Piketty, and company, released figures charting global disparities exacerbated by Covid that made Le Monde’s front page but were ignored in the US.

Billionaires have captured much more of the global wealth since the onset of Covid and part of the increase in profits is from that enormous moneymaker the streaming services, expected to generate £53 billion in revenue in 2021 with almost half of all of the global profits going to US streamers.
 
The need to produce constant weekly product to match streaming competitors reached a level of frenzy this year to the point where the pressure put on industry workers resulted in even a traditionally “sweetheart” union like the IATSE sanctioning a strike.

Three parables illustrate the nature of this profit lust, heightened by the persistent presence of the virus.
 
The first story involves what used to be, as Theodor Adorno termed it, “a mark of suffering,” now reduced to simple branding as the level of daily commodification also reaches new heights.