[A24]

I appreciate these narrative mechanisms in literature, but I’ve never enjoyed them in film or TV. In the last two decades, we’ve experienced a Golden Age of TV in terms of quality writing and mise-en-scene. But at the same time, there has been this insistance on doing constant flashbacks and backstories to “flesh out the characters”. For me, they’ve always taken me right out of it, like a Brechtian verfremdungseffect. First of all, I prefer to stay in the moment, to absorb the settings and narrative as they unfold in the presence. Second, I like to create my own back stories in my mind for the characters as witnessed through their behaviour and dialogue. I don’t need constant exposition. Show, don’t tell.

I agree with every word you wrote here. To me, a flashback feels as if the movie suddenly stops and another movie starts. The only good way to avoid this in a TV series is to devote an entire episode to backstory, thereby creating a short movie all on its own. Episode 6 of Dahmer was like that and it was the best TV of that year.