Binge-watching is the term for it. It is the act of sitting down with the intention of watching a single episode of something, on DVD or Blu-Ray or stacked up on a PVR and, two days later, realising the weekend has gone and every available episode of the series has been consumed. While this is an awesome way to spend a weekend, it is not recommended if you want to also achieve things like housework, gardening and sleeping.
Recently the Beloved and I fell into the binge-watching trap, thanks to a French series called Les Revenants (or, in proper language, The Returned). The returnees of the title are dead people, who waft back into the town from whence they came, not realising that they were/are dead. Needless to say their return to the population causes lots of atmospheric unease and a distinctly French attempt to understand why this is happening.
French zombies are much cooler than actual zombies. Instead of the slobbering messes that are The Walking Dead zombies, French zombies are very photogenic and dress in stylish, smart-casual clothing and smoke cigarettes and ponder the universe.
They ponder the universe a lot - what it means to be dead; what it means to be alive; whether or not to have another cigarette. Many times the period of pondering ends with someone shrugging in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Being a French zombie is so cool that even some of the characters who aren't zombies start to think they are zombies in the hope of being cooler - and understanding the universe.
Binge-watching a series in a language you don't speak or understand carries with it a higher degree of difficulty than normal binge-watching because the biggest enemy of binge-watching is losing concentration. By the time you're into the fifth or sixth episode of the weekend, story fatigue is starting to set in so the ability to concentrate on the dialogue becomes important. Yes, subtitles help but only to the point where you can still focus on the teeny, tiny words on the screen, which is why only the truly experienced binge-watcher should attempt a series in another language. Bingers of moody Scandinavian crime series will tell you that the most difficult time is mid-series, when you can no longer read the credits and all the characters start to sound like the Swedish chef from The Muppets and you find yourself making repeated trips to the snack food.
