Streaming TV

In the US: Available on Hulu
In the UK: Tuesdays, 10pm, Virgin TV Ultra HD. Starts September 18

So I’m going to say it now and obviously you have to bear in mind that all my predictions are inevitably wrong, but just in case for once I’m not, I’d like to take credit for my incredible psychic powers this time: peak TV is unsustainable.

You don’t technically need to be psychic to work that out. Netflix’s currently $3.1bn in debt in order to pay for all its original content and it’s going to need an awful lot of subscribers paying $9.99 a month for a long time to break even on that. To be fair, it got $2bn in revenue in Q3, so maybe not, but that’s Netflix. How about Amazon?

More so, how about Hulu, which is making shows like The Path, 12.22.63, Chance and The Handmaid’s Tale willy nilly and you can’t even watch it outside the US. And now we’ve got Shut Eye, in which Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice, Touching Evil) plays a Las Vegas magician turn shabby Los Angeles conman psychic who has problems with Gypsies (including matriarch Isabella Rosselini) who don’t like the fact his sister, Leah Gibson (Rogue, The Returned) is using their tricks; his wife and partner in crime KaDee Strickland (The Wedding Bells), who thinks he’s losing his mojo; and disgruntled boyfriends of his easily duped clients.

Now, obviously, Jeffrey Donovan is a good actor. But is he $175,000 an episode good? Probably not, but that’s what Hulu’s paying him. And if that’s what they’re paying him, you can bet pretty much everyone else is having to pay similar cash for similar actors, let alone the likes of Hugh Laurie and Billy Bob Thornton, who’s allegedly getting $350,000 an ep for Goliath.

Something’s got to give and either there are going to be a lot of companies who are going to have to get out of the content business soon or there are going to be some ‘market shake-ups’ (ie bankruptcies, mergers, acquisitions) in the next few years.

Again, you heard it here first.

Still, enjoy it while it lasts, since we might get some good TV out of it, at least. Is Shut Eye some of that good TV?

Almost. Certainly, Shut Eye is a good name for the first half of the show’s first episode, since it’s amazingly soporific. I was this close to switching it off and not bothering with a proper review of it.

But the show really gets its name from the concept of the mystic third eye, which when opened reveals all manner of wisdom and knowledge. Here, Donovan’s third eye is shut until that jealous boyfriend gives him a kicking to the head halfway through the episode. Then, hypnotist Emmanuelle Chriqui (Entourage) tries to hypnotise him into wanting to partner with her and before he knows it, Donovan’s inner eye is opened and he starts seeing the world beyond, including psychedelic peppers. And not just the future – soon, he starts to re-think his life and asking himself whether lying to everyone is a good idea.

That’s more or less when the show starts to become watchable. How watchable, I’ll let you know once I’ve got a few more episodes under my belt – Hulu’s put them out all at once for a change – since although Donovan’s very watchable and obviously knows from his Touching Evil days how to play brain-damaged sympathetically and accurately, the other characters are all unlovable scumbags who like to dupe others. The Gypsy side of things is pretty offensive, Donovan’s the sole source of humour, and the crime’s are all petty and the victims are all sad dupes.

That means that you’re in it only for Donovan and how well he can put off increasing serenity and not being dark and glowery for a change. Who knows – perhaps he might really be worth that $175,000 an episode after all.