Comfort culture has never been intellectually fashionable. It rightly gets a better press than “guilty pleasure” – have the courage to like what you like, people – but the notion of the comfort read, listen or watch still causes the highest of brows to furrow.
If you can’t watch Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, or listen to Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, when down in the dumps then you have no right to access culture at all, or some such pointy-headed baloney.
Yet most folk have some such balm stored away for moments of emotional fragility. Many have surely been accessed over the past few months. The news around the world has not been good. The weather has been appalling. We all have further miseries unique to ourselves.
No doubt some original thinkers turn to abrasive noise rock or the habitually disturbing stories of HP Lovecraft. But most will seek something soothing, something gentle and, most of all, something familiar.
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Oddly, none of my most reliable comfort movies is exactly joyous: Now Voyager (Bette Davis resigns herself to romantic separation from Paul Henreid), The Ghost and Mrs Muir (Gene Tierney falls in love with a dead sailor), Goodbye Mr Chips (Robert Donat’s favourite pupils are all killed in the first World War). But each exhibits a conciliatory sort of unhappiness. The lead characters end on serviceable terms with their disappointment. Who could hope for more?
Music? Van Morrison may be a famously crabby geezer, but nothing better lightens the load than Madame George, from Astral Weeks, or Listen to the Lion, from Saint Dominic’s Preview. His near contemporary Joni Mitchell manages something similar on albums such as Blue and Hejira. None of these can dissolve the greater tragedies. But more everyday stresses do tend to wither.
Books? Nothing does the job so well as The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford. Those novels are funnier than they are sad, but they are definitely both. Television? Dad’s Army, Columbo and something else we will get to in a moment.
I sense readers of all ages grinding teeth. “Are you 102? Why is everything from so long ago?” That’s the thing about comfort culture. The most important quality is familiarity. We need to sink into something that is a stranger to unpredictability. We need to be convinced that, defying chaos all around, a friendly part of the universe still resolves itself as it always did.
Elizabeth Bennet hooks up with Mr Darcy. George Bailey rescues the savings and loan. Miss Marple cosily solves the murder at the vicarage.
One might reasonably recommend Mackenzie Crook’s recent series Small Prophets as a future comfort watch, but the eccentric sitcom just can’t do the job fully on first viewing. Who knows what unexpected developments may occur? Better trust in a 15th rewatch of the same creator’s Detectorists. Now there’s a solace watch for the ages.
[ From the archive: Saint Dominic's Preview - 1972 album review by Stewart ParkerOpens in new window ]
Understandably, television has, in the streaming age, become the most immediate and common source of cultural consolation. You don’t need to move from your curled-up state on the couch. There are hours of this stuff right in front of you. Endless Derry Girls. More Great British Bake Off than you can shake a baguette at. As people still seem mysteriously tolerant of Friends, I will also mention the mournful keening that accompanied its recent excision from Netflix.
One series has, however, slowly, persuasively – and deservedly, in my view – secured a near-undisputed hold on the ultimate-comfort-watch title. It now appears in every listicle on the topic. It bosses the streaming charts. Yet it still feels like a bit of a cult. A quarter of a century after its first appearance, a peculiar comedy-drama, energised by vintage screwball dialogue, has become the Muhammad Ali of feel-better telly. “Gilmore Girls is an endless buffet of TV comfort food,” The New York Times announced two years ago.
Initially broadcast on Warner Bros’ now-defunct WB network, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s show, centred on the relationship between a perky mom and her genius daughter, started off slowly, before, over six seasons, evolving into a notable hit. (The less said about the awful last, seventh series the soonest mended.)
But it really came into its own during the streaming era. By 2023 Netflix reported its viewing figures as being ahead of Friends’. In the first six months of 2025 it clocked up 491.4 million views on the service. “Highly rewatched,” my Netflix screen helpfully confirms.
What makes Gilmore Girls medicine? The small-town nostalgia. The prettiness of its New England settings. The warmth of its relationships. The undeniable wit in the dialogue. The series’ most-liked characters appear to lean a teeny bit leftward, but the show itself argues for the virtues of unthreatening provincial stability. There are worse ways of escaping reality.
