The days of the TV box set may be numbered. There was a time, not so long ago, when box sets were a status symbol: they'd line your walls, they'd show everyone what great taste you had, they'd allow you to grip strangers by the arm and froth on rabidly about an obscure, edgy US import where nothing happens and everyone speaks in an impenetrable made-up patois. But now? Now they're for people who don't know what to buy their auntie for Christmas.
Just look at the charts. The most popular DVD box set of 2013 is the critically reviled BBC1 sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys. The third, fifth and seventh most popular sets? Also Mrs Brown's Boys. Miranda's there, too. So are Downton Abbey and Call The Midwife. They're all cosy choices. If Susan Boyle had made a box set where she does nothing but stroll through the Cotswolds and nod at chintz, you can bet your bum it'd be one of the year's biggest sellers.
It seems like the box set industry is going the same way as the music industry. Only big, mainstream hits, loved by people who still haven't got the hang of the internet, sell any more. Don't get me wrong: people will still rhapsodise about Breaking Bad. The difference is that they'll have watched it on Netflix.
Netflix – and LoveFilm, and Blinkbox, and the other video-on-demand services – have made physical DVD box sets redundant. The way we watch these shows hasn't changed – we still spend days camped out on our sofas, inertly soaking up episode after episode – but the delivery has. The shows are all hosted on remote servers, so you can watch them instantly. And if you get bored, you can stop without worrying about wasting £40. And you don't have to stuff them into back-breaking boxes when you move house. It's all terribly convenient.
There are plenty of reasons to mourn the death of the box set. There was a thrill, absent now, that came from owning something nobody else had. And they were the perfect gift, too – small and easy to wrap. Those days are over. Unless we want to buy someone Mrs Brown's Boys. And we don't. We're not monsters.
Top 10 box sets
1 Mrs Brown's Boys series three
2 Game Of Thrones season two
3 Mrs Brown's Boys series two
4 Game Of Thrones season one
5 Mrs Brown's Boys complete series one and two
6 The Big Bang Theory seasons one to five
7 Mrs Brown's Boys series one
8 Downton Abbey: A Journey To the Highlands
9 Miranda series one and two
10 Call The Midwife
Source: metro.co.uk
