Streaming services have created a new and strain of déjà vu, and this is how it works.
You start watching a new US drama series which the algorithm thinks you’ll enjoy.
Halfway through the first episode, you get a vague sense of familiarity with the subject matter. Halfway through the second episode the penny drops: it is a remake of a Spanish drama series you watched two years ago.
But you don’t have to be watching Netflix or Stan to have this new, ‘been there, seen that’ experience. You can also get it watching mainstream news networks. Or rather, watching their coverage of one particular story…
Yes, it is probably a good thing that President Assad is toast. But is this really the dawn of a new and unprecedented era of liberty and equality for one of the world’s most oppressed and dispossessed populations? Or is it, as the strangely muted applause of many pundits suggests, just the start of Season 4 of Arab Spring?
In which case, having seen Seasons 1, 2, and 3, we won’t need the subtitles to know what’s going on.
For some, the penny-dropping moment would have been the statue of Assad being pushed over and dragged through the streets of Damascus. For others it was the random firing of AK47s in the streets by, er, ordinary civilians (none of whom, even more worryingly, have been drinking).
But we all know what will follow.
Months or possibly years of violent chaos, during which groups of even more brutal, even more luxuriantly bearded men wrestle for control, while foreign governments stand tut-tutting on the sidelines, and sending money and arms to the groups who they believe will best serve their respective regional ambitions.
The season finale will show the group with the most AK-47s imposing an equally oppressive regime, and after the closing credits fade to black, we will learn from a series of sobering, serif font captions that twice as many Syrian women and children were killed in the aftermath of the coup than were killed by the man it deposed.
In the meantime, some of us will agree with Western leaders who have condemned Mr Trump’s response to the Syrian rebellion as evidence of isolationist ambitions. Others might think those leaders should take a leaf out of the Trump playbook before framing their own foreign policy: and watch a bit more television.
