Why Gen Z hate modern TV. Also: Sydney's Fallout s2 launch. And: When will Industry be back?
Yesterday evening in Sydney saw the Australian premiere event for season 2 of Prime Video’s Fallout.
They flew out cast members of the show and mounted an impressive Instagram-friendly outside experience.
Episodes one and two of the show were screened for the audience on the huge VMAX screen. I hadn’t actually seen all of season one yet, so popped out after the first 20 minutes or so (I was understandably slightly confused by some of it), but I’m going to blitz through season one ahead of the series return on Dec 17.
Here’s show stars Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, and Aaron Moten in a pre-screening Q&A. They were all very funny and charming - The lighting isn’t great for this pic, so it looks a lot more low res than I’d have liked. Impressive, though, was Goggins’ David Byrne suit.
From outside:
Won’t somebody think of the children (and their TV programming)?
This article from late last week at
really frustrated me. It has Whitney Friedlander interrogating a reasonable question, which is why audiences for Gen Z shows are tiny and why that audience seems to be happier watching older library titles.
She writes:
Underlying the discussion: the uneasy reality that TV once defined young adulthood. Now Gen Z defines culture — and TV is struggling to keep up. Viewership data backs this up: 65 percent of what 16-to–34-year olds watch is library TV, not new series. In other words, the dominant youth audience isn’t discovering new Hollywood shows — they’re rewatching old ones.
For those who spark to it, I Love LA’s unhinged energy is definitely fun — but for those who don’t, there aren’t many alternatives in the quest to be the archetypal Gen Z comedy. The show’s closest contemporary is FX’s Adults, about a chosen family of 20-somethings squatting in one of their (Malik Elassal’s Samir) childhood homes in Queens. Some put Overcompensating, 32-year-old creator-star Benito Skinner’s much-beloved coming-out story on Prime Video, in this category — but it focuses on college kids. While ABC’s Abbott Elementary from creator-star Quinta Brunson, 35, is a ratings and Emmy hit with young adults front and center, its ensemble and themes are multigenerational.
So the question is… why, after decades of network phenoms like NBC’s Friends, Fox’s Living Single and New Girl, and CBS’ How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory, zeitgeisty HBO entries Girls and creator-star Issa Rae’s Insecure, and cult hits from Comedy Central’s Broad City and TBS’ Search Party to ABC’s Happy Endings, is there so much less TV these days about being young and single and just figuring it all out with a little help from your friends?
The article explores the usual terrain about the generational differences (half of Gen Z haven’t even had sex… oh my!). What it doesn’t do is two things:
It never defines for the audience exactly who Gen Z are. For the record, we are talking about people born between 1997 and 2012, so 13-28 year-olds. It’s actually probably a good thing that a good chunk of those very young people are not sexually active…
And frustratingly, it ignores the obvious difference in the TV shows being consumed by this generation… none of the new shows are made with a network-TV style of episodic disposability.
Why are the youngs watching Friends, Living Single, New Girl, How I Met Your Mother, Broad City, and Happy Endings? Probably for the same reason I loved watching them back in the day and why I still watch these shows on occasion now: They’re easy to watch with fun characters, and funny writing.
It’s not more complicated than that. Lets not overthink it.
Not paid sponsorship
The What’s coming on HBO Max this December PR email (for Australia) just landed in my inbox. I want to make this clear: this blurb is not a paid promotion. But… there’s a bunch of titles in it this month that I wanted to highlight because they have me excited.
First up, we have The Brothers McMullen movie sequel The Family McMullen on Dec 5. The film brings back a bunch of the cast from the original film (which will also debut on the platform Dec 5).
Next there’s an influx of Adult Swim titles that have been eagerly anticipated: Common Side Effects and Haha, You Clowns on Dec 16. There are also a bunch more Adult Swim titles coming next year and my understanding is that we’ll see more library titles too.
Dec 1 will have the directors cut of the remastered Picnic At Hanging Rock for its 50th anniversary.
Out of reasons of taste and not wasting anyone’s time, I’ll keep from mentioning the addition of Family Matters and Step By Step on Dec 22.
News Desk
Stuart Levin has penned a really lovely remembrance for the recently departed Warner Bros TV PR exec Robert Pietranton. Read: Deadline
Somehow Kim Kardashian’s All’s Fair is coming back for a second season. Read: Deadline
US Peacock subscribers will be able to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in multiview. Why this isn’t done for more events on streaming services is weird. It should be weird when this sort of thing is not offered. Read: Variety
Today Variety has a list of the 100 best movies of all time and as a comprehensive list, it makes not a lick of sense.
For those of you who have tried arguing recently that James Cameron is wasting his time and talent on the Avatar movies, might I drive your attention to today’s news that Cameron will co-direct Billie Eilish’s new concert movie. Read: ScreenCrush
Speaking of James Cameron and Avatar…
A must-listen today is a two-part interview for The Town podcast with James Cameron talking about the production of the Avatar films, along with thoughts on the future of movies, technology, the colonisation of Mars, who should buy Warner Bros Discovery, and a lot more. It’s a great chat and it has left me even more enthused about seeing the new Avatar film out just a few weeks from now(!!!!).
Trailer Park
Industry, which I love, is back Jan 11 on HBO for season 4.
Y: Marshalls, the Yellowstone sequel series, debuts on CBS March 1.
Season 2 of AMC+ show Sanctuary: A Witches Tale debuts Dec 25.
US network Masterpiece has its Winter/Spring 2026 sizzle reel.
That’s the newsletter for today.
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