Beth: Channel 4’s first ‘digital drama’ is so snoozy that no young people will watch it

This meditative, 45-minute tale of a glamorous couple, split into three chunks for YouTube, is very far from snappy viewing. It just feels like terrestrial TV

In 1964, Andy Warhol shot the Empire State Building then turned it into an art film called Empire, which is more than eight hours long. I was reminded of this last Christmas when I let my nine-year-old niece choose what to watch on TV. She went straight to the YouTube app and pressed play on a video comparing US and UK chocolate bars. It went into such a tremendous amount of detail that I was mesmerised, not by the content but by how brazenly boring& it was. It went on for what felt like hours. It might still be going& on now.

I wonder if this is what television natives get wrong about YouTube. In all the discussions about disappearing attention spans and “second screen” viewing – ie& scrolling on your phone while leaving a single brain cell free to drool at whatever product placement Emily in Paris has just dropped into the “plot” – there is an assumption that online content has to be short and snappy. That might be more true of TikTok or Reels, but YouTube is a place that chews up time then swallows it. Do I know this because I have watched lengthy self-produced documentaries about complete strangers’ walking holidays? Look, in the 60s, it would have been art.