Editorial: Netflix could make TV bingers of us all

Time was when when the die-hard fans of a cult TV show had to wait miserable for months before they could buy a box set of the last series at their nearest HMV store. How last year that seems.

As we report today, lovers of Arrested Development, centring on the dysfunctional doings of the Bluth family, and which retains a devoted following years after Fox TV cancelled it, were able to gorge on 16 episodes yesterday after the streaming company Netflix released the entire new series in the morning.

Interestingly, this was not an old series that Netflix was re-broadcasting but a new one that the company commissioned – itself marking a milestone in the transformation of streaming services into TV stations in their own right. No doubt TV bingeing is bad for you – but mini-series bingers have never had it so good.