Sometimes you just want to binge-watch a non-Christmas series during the holidays. My go-to series was VH1’s I Love … the decades series.
Back in the early 2000s, we lived without streaming. It seems impossible now, but once we watched DVDs or whatever was on TV. If you were lucky enough to have cable, holiday programming was limited to Christmas-related things or reruns. Some cable channels did marathons of their shows so people could catch up on episodes they may have missed when they first aired. It sounds so archaic now.
When I got to my grandma’s house for my holiday breaks, the only thing I wanted to watch was VH1’s I Love … the decades series. VH1 would play the episodes back to back on an unending loop, and I couldn’t get enough. Over the long Thanksgiving weekend this year, I craved some nostalgia. I wanted to watch a series I used to love bingeing. Yet I couldn’t find it on any streaming service. What gives?
I heart the 1980s
Based on a BBC series, VH1 started its popular series with I Love the ’80s in 2002. Each hour-long episode covered a year of the 1980s. That includes big news events and pop culture milestones. Comedians, actors, and musicians would comically discuss what was popular and important. There was usually a song, movie, and slang term that stood out for each year. It perfectly summed up so much about the years it covered.
The success of I Love the ’80s led to many other shows covering the decades. VH1 also did two more series about the 1980s: I Love the ’80s Strikes Back and I Love the ’80s 3-D. There are also two series about the 1970s, 1990s, and the New Millennium/2000s. The series even generated albums that served as a mix tape for everything they talked about on the show.
For me, it is a double dip of nostalgia. Being born in the mid-1980s, I knew a lot of the things they covered during the 1980s and 1990s series. Some of my favorite things were topics featured on the show. The 1970s episodes were largely educational, but still very entertaining. As a teenager, I thought this was one of the best series ever. It was also one I could share and laugh over with my grandma. Now that the holidays are here again, and my grandmother sadly is no longer here, I thought watching the I Love … series would be fun. Only, it is unavailable on any streaming platform. If you have cable (do any millennials have cable?), you might still be able to watch VH1 or stream it on the VH1 platform. The rest of us will try remember the good times, which is hard without quippy commentary.
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