Sunday night in my house is kind of a struggle. Everyone's hungover, the house is a mess, everyone's pissed off about going back to work the next day, the takeaway people have kept you waiting for over an hour and, worst of all, you can't decide what the hell to watch on the telly.
Since we've got about six DVDs left between five of us, watching one of those is out (especially since two of them are copies of Shawshank Redemption and ain't nobody left who hasn't seen that). Ditto for watching something on TV; if it's a series then everyone's at different points in it and if it's Escape to the Countryside, then it's Escape To The Countryside and no-one wants to watch that.
So it's over to Netflix. Or Amazon Prime. Or Now TV. Or Sky On Demand or whatever you've got. Chances are the choice there is SO big, it's actually even harder to make a decision about what to watch; obviously with that much choice, the end result should be nothing short of the most perfect Sunday evening film ever created and nothing else will work at all.
The problem lies in different tastes in film; I've got one housemate who'd be happy if the only film she ever watched again was The Wedding Planner, one who only likes gritty arthouse films and one who will watch anything as long as it's got Jason Statham and/or Danny Dyer in it. Me, I'll kind of watch anything but I'm objectionable when hungover and like to shoot other people's opinions down for lols. As you can imagine, we rarely managed to find something we'll all enjoy.
So, we've come up with a solution. And it's simple. And I don't know why more people don't try it out. It involves structure, pre-planning and a whole lot of humilty on the part of the objectionable people (sorry), but so far, it's working. Hey, we even managed to watch all of a film with no complaints last week. It was lovely.
So, how do we do it? Well it's simple. Read on to find out.
Step 1
Set up a new profile. Call it 'House' or 'Everyone'. Hell, call it 'Billy Bob Thornton's Sex Tapes' for all I care, just create a profile that no-one uses for their own personal viewing habits. When it asks you to choose three titles you've enjoyed, choose three films you and your housemates managed to watch with minimal arguments. This will work your recommended films up into ones that are also hopefully acceptable to the whole house also.
Step 2
Encourage your housemates to populate 'The List' of this new profile with five films they'd like to watch. Encourage them to keep in mind the different tastes of their fellow housemates. So for instance, steer the action film-obsessed one away from the erm, divisive Expendables 3 and instead suggest the more crowd-pleasing 22 Jump Street. Equally, steer your other housemate away from Chalet Girl and ask her instead to consider something like a tried and tested classic like St. Elmo's Fire.
Step 3
Invite each housemate to veto and delete three films from the now well-stocked list. This should weed out the no-go films.
Step 4
Implement a rota. Each week it is the 'turn' of a housemate to choose a film either from The List, or the films that are now recommended on the profile. This rota doesn't change, can't be argued with, and must be accepted no matter how hungover everyone is. The beauty of the recommendation algorithm? The more films you watch off the list, the more films are recommended that should hopefully please everyone meaning that when The List has been exhausted, you should switch over to choosing from the self-perpetuating recommendations lists.
All that's left to argue over now is where you get the takeaway from.
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Illustration by Katie Turner
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.