Polly Gillespie: The nuclear TV family is dead

How often do you sit down with your family to watch TV? Photo / supplied

So many choices, so many memories of the old TV in the lounge corner that played one channel, then, lo and behold, two channels of fabulous black and white electric magic!

We all thought the hover-board was around the corner when we got three channels. Back in the olden days we all sat around at exactly the same time in just about every household in New Zealand and feverishly watched Bonanza, with our dinners on our TV trays.

Oh, I loved that TV tray with the picture of Lake Wakatipu in all its glory.

We'd watch the show then the next day at school and work everyone chatted away about how hot Little Joe was. And what a loveable oaf that Hoss was.

I'm not even sure how we made out the faces on those tiny screens with pixels the size of post cards.

I tried to watch a replay of the Rugby World Cup in 1987 and I had no idea who was playing, what number was on their back and where the bloody ball was.

We are rotten spoiled now and completely out of socio-synch with each other. No one watches anything at the same time as anyone else. That is just way too uncool.

I'm pretty sure my mother and my aunty Heather watch The Chase and Inspector Morse simultaneously, but they may be some of the last group viewers on the flipping planet.

My friend is lying on the couch doing her nails and watching Peaky Blinders, and as I tap away she sighs, "Netflix Pol. How did we ever live without it?"

It was 1991 and Sky TV arrived with movie and documentary channels and...CNN. Suddenly my life changed. I had Christiane Amanpour milling about war torn countries exposing atrocity. We were hooked.

World events happened live on TV for hours, sometimes days: The standoff with David Koresh in Waco Texas. The Oklahoma bombing. The siege of the Russian Whitehouse.

We just sat and watched the world open up in all its blood covered, war torn, gory glory, and we watched like it was Edtv or The Truman Show.

When the towers came down in 2001- God that was ages ago - the world collectively sat for days just watching, waiting, sighing, crying, reeling and regaling.

Now all the news channels seem to be filled with behind the scenes stories about behind the scenes people, usually themselves, doing anything to avoid reporting the news.

Netflix and Lightbox and numerous other wild and crazy options suddenly appeared last year. Oh sure, we'd flirted with Apple TV but you needed friends in America and a degree in computer science to understand it.

We had websites that stole shows and played them for you at various levels of quality whilst at the same time rogering your family PC with every virus known to man and geek alike.

It was last year that Lightbox stepped up and with a sexy, windy, sultry lick of the lips said "come hither and let me show you anything your heart desires, when your heart desires it."

Netflix then bowled up like a big Hollywood executive handing out cigars, and we downloaded that as well. I'm hooked on Narcos. I'm hooked on Fargo. I'm hooked on all kinds of things, and I have no idea who the heck is watching what I'm watching, when, or how.

The nuclear TV family is dead, but on a Sunday night in my small social circle we all watch some of the most wonderful, honest, kind and loveable television ever made.

We watch Topp Country, and I am reminded of who I am and what a small nuclear family we really still are, despite all the viewing options out there these days.

Right, on to my final episode of Peaky Blinders - anyone else?