Shows That One Can “Watch While Folding Laundry”? Minor Passions and Televisual Lukewarmness in Netflix’s The Leopard

This paper seeks to highlight the link between some current televisual forms and the contradictions of our relationship to digital platforms. Many shows today aim to create ‘comfortable’, soothing experiences, which spell the end of riskier and more original narratives in TV production. I will map the circulation of feelings that indicate ‘lukewarmness’, comfort, and that set TV fictions far from the initial expectations, raised years ago, about the medium as newly important. Whereas these critical commentaries and theorisations concern primarily US television, I will describe the intertwining of forms and representations in a global market, focusing on a European show: the Netflix remake of The Leopard (2025). Through the analysis of the show and discourse about mid-TV, boredom, fatigue and casual viewing, the routine of TV consumption emerges as characterized by the perpetually renewed hope or promise of finding pleasure and meaning in gratifying forms of entertainment. How does this paradoxical relationship with television shape, and is shaped by television forms? What kind of affects circulate in this contemporary economy, across technologies, forms, narratives, and subjects?