The phrase “guilty pleasure” has become so embedded in our vocabulary that we don’t often stop to question what it actually means. When we describe our television viewing habits – or, for that matter, our listening habits or our eating habits – this way, we’re essentially pologising for our enjoyment of something.
But perhaps it’s time to ask: should harmless pleasure require guilt at all?
There’s something almost radical about openly embracing the simple joy of mindless entertainment. Shows like Married At First Sight, Love Island, Emmerdale, or The Real Housewives aren’t trying to win prestigious acclaim, though you could certainly argue that they do a pretty good job at distilling the human condition into exaggerated-but-familiar stories.
But what “guilty-pleasure” TV does is arguably more valuable than BAFTAs or critical acclaim: they’re giving us permission to switch off.
Every new high-profile TV drama series promises to be more complex, more nuanced, and more emotionally devastating than the last.
This has of course produced some extraordinary television, but it has also created an exhausting viewing landscape where entertainment can feel like homework. Or unnecessary trauma.
How many of us have Netflix queues filled with critically celebrated shows that we feel we should watch but somehow never quite feel ready to tackle?
Sometimes, you just need a replay of 8 Out Of 10 Cats.
The pressure to engage with “serious” television is real, but these shows demand our full attention and a not-insignificant emotional investment.
Then, often, they leave us feeling drained and depressed rather than refreshed.
Sometimes we just need a break from adding yet more political upheaval, injustice, and existential dread to our brains when we switch on the telly of an evening.
While such programming serves an important cultural function, and I genuinely love a lot of those shows, I do think it’s worth asking whether all our entertainment needs to carry such weight.
Or whether we should be made to feel ashamed when we watch something that doesn’t.
Bring on beautiful nonsense
Reality television, in particular, has mastered something that high-brow drama often misses: the art of beautiful nonsense.
Take Married At First Sight, where strangers marry and then navigate the peculiar social experiment of instant matrimony. The premise is absurd, the participants either delightful or horrifying, and the relationship advice often laughable.
But god, they can be fun.
Junky reality shows operate in a bubble where the stakes feel manageable and the conflicts, while dramatic, are ultimately temporary and usually meaningless.
We can invest emotionally without the distress that comes from watching people face real trauma.
Similarly, long-running soaps like Emmerdale offer the comfort of familiar dysfunction. These fictional communities have been working through their problems for decades, creating a sense of continuity and predictability that can be remarkably soothing.
I no longer watch Emmerdale but I was a fan for years, and while the storylines may be outlandish – how many times can one village pub explode? – they happen in a framework we understand.
And that, ultimately, doesn’t matter.
Escapism as self-care
Essentially, a lot of us need more mental downtime. Our brains need periods of rest and recovery, times when we’re not processing complex information or grappling with difficult emotions.
“Guilty pleasure” television serves this function beautifully, offering content that entertains us without taxing us too much.
After a day of making decisions, solving problems, and navigating real-world complexities, sometimes the most therapeutic thing we can do is watch people argue about which side of the bed to sleep on, or follow the romantic entanglements of fictional farmers.
Think of these shows as a mental palate cleanser, a way to decompress that doesn’t require us to confront deep meaning or analyse subtext.
On top of that, these shows are things we can have chats with people at work or at home about that don’t require us to dredge up the horrors of Adolescence or navigate tricky conversations about what Tar was even about.
Reality shows and soaps create shared cultural touchstones that mean your grandma, your niece, and your work colleague might all have opinions about the latest Love Island scandal or Coronation Street storyline, creating connections that just wouldn’t exist if we were talking about abstract cinematography or complex narrative structures.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of those too. I just rarely have to justify that to other people.
Shitty guilty-pleasure shows arguably even offer a kind of anthropological study, , if we want to make them sound more impressive, albeit a manufactured one.
The situations may be contrived, but the human behaviour we observe is often familiar and authentic.
Drop the guilt
Perhaps it’s time to retire the term “guilty pleasure” altogether. Pleasure, after all, is not inherently something to feel guilty about (unless you, as I was, are Roman Catholic, in which case fill your boots).
The racy books we read on holiday, the daft music we listen to when we’re getting ready to go out, or the Ginsters pasty we secretly love from the petrol station should not be something we feel ashamed to admit. At worst, we even feel like we should lie about it, which is absurd – but common.
The hierarchy that places one form of entertainment above another is often more about snobbery than artistic merit.
But if something brings joy to millions and creates genuine moments of human connection, it has value. (And if neither of those things are true but you enjoy it anyway, it still has value.)
When the news cycle is relentless and grim and serious television often mirrors our real-world anxieties, we sometimes need to grab hold of escapism where we can find it.
Shows that make us laugh, gasp, or even just zone out for an hour are respite, they are enjoyable, and they are fun.
We need different things from our entertainment at different times. Sometimes we want to be challenged, provoked, and moved to tears by brilliant storytelling. Other times, we want to watch strangers complete physical challenges or see celebrities ice skating.
Who really cares?
Perhaps we should be celebrating television’s ability to serve a broad spectrum of human needs. When everything feels impossibly serious, there’s something genuinely joyful about choosing silliness, and choosing to be entertained without apology.
Image: Anna Shvets