Why do we watch the same TV shows over and over again?

Why are we rewatching Friends or The Sopranos for the 10th time instead of ticking off something new from our ever-growing watchlists?

Television experts Alex Casey and Linda Burgess weigh in on the irresistible pull of nostalgia and predictability that comes with old sitcoms and reality TV.

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Every year or so, television critic Alex Casey will sit down to watch Peep Show or The Office UK from start to finish. It doesn't matter that she's seen them a thousand times before - the comfort of these shows is unmatched. And for Casey, there's always something new to observe.

"There's certain qualities to those shows in particular where the writing is so strong, the performances are so strong, that the rewatch actually rewards you with something new every time," Casey says.

"You can watch The Office and just focus on Tim and Dawn, or just focus on the extras in the scene, or particular lines that come out of nowhere. It's the same with Peep Show, I can do a rewatch and just be all about Super Hans for the whole time.

"There's a certain coziness and comfort in comedy, you know no one's gonna get stabbed, you know the protagonist isn't gonna get killed two episodes in. It's gonna make you feel good, it's gonna make you laugh."

Writer and TV reviewer Linda Burgess has been watching and rewatching her favourite shows for more than 60 years now - everything from The Dick Van Dyke Show to The Sopranos.

She says comfort viewing - and even comfort reading - can offer some calm during periods of uncertainty.

"I've got a granddaughter in London, she's a very big reader, but she's read those same seven or eight Harry Potter books dozens of times," Burgess says.

"I think it's just the comfort of old friends. In real life, we have no idea what's gonna happen tomorrow, we can only tread. But in television or in books, you know what's gonna happen, it's done, so it takes away the anxiety of having to worry about the future."

Burgess says shows grounded in universal truths, like human relationships, tend to hold up over time.

"If you were watching Friends while flatting with other people your own age, and then you look at it again when you're 50 living with a huge mortgage in your own house, it's really interesting to go back and see why you liked it last time, and see if you connect and still find it funny.

"Obviously context is extremely important. Something made 30 years ago is made for an audience 30 years ago."

While writing a TV column for the Dominion Post, Burgess began watching 30-year-old Coronation Street episodes that were re-airing alongside new ones. She developed a unique awareness of the characters - almost like they were people in her real life.

"You saw Gail when she was 32 and you saw her when she was 62 and you thought, 'Oh, she still married the wrong man' or, 'She's come a long way, look she's got quite mature in the intervening 30 years' If you're interested in people, then to watch it again is quite an interesting thing to do."

There’s no shortage of choice when it comes to television. Ironically, that abundance is exactly what can leave us stuck - overwhelmed by options and unsure what to watch next.

"I feel total choice paralysis when I open any streaming service," Casey says.

"You have all of television and movie history at your fingertips, and I think it can be really hard to figure out what you actually want to watch. There's another problem with streamers, particularly Netflix, where there's a real emphasis on speed and volume of content rather than quality, and sometimes you look at things like the Top 10, and what's driving that is like, the biggest, flashiest, fastest, newest stuff, and that doesn't always mean good stuff.

"You can get burned once or twice and you're like, 'See, this is why I don't try' and you go back to the safety of what you know. I think it can be quite hard with those streamers that just have so much content, to sort through the sludge."

Casey is an avid watcher of reality TV. She says the genre follows a familiar format that viewers find solace in.

"There's not necessarily gonna be enormous surprises, but there's enough wiggle room for there to be interesting things to happen to characters.

"For shows like The Bachelor, they're almost competitions and they have a set structure, and that's really appealing when everything feels structure-less in the world and hierarchies are collapsing. If you're watching a home reno show, you know there'll be a team challenge. If you're watching Survivor, you know there's gonna be a physical challenge, a reward challenge, and a vote.

"There's a certain amount of comfort and reassurance and stability in those sorts of formats that's potentially more alluring now than it's ever been."

With old school sitcoms, there's a predictability in the 20 minute, limited seasons format, Casey says.

"There's something in the restraint of a very short season that you know you can watch the entire arc, start to finish, depending on your appetite, in a few days or weeks. I still haven't watched The Sopranos or The Wire, I've let those shows get away on me, not to mention all the shows that have happened in the past two decades after that. You kind of get this overwhelming build up where I'm just like, 'What am I gonna watch for 12 seasons? I'll just watch a two season show that's perfect, again.

"My stamina is very worn down for hard-going television or really tense, fraught dramas or slow burns, my metabolism has just been totally shocked by social media, just seeing the horrors of humanity constantly on my phone, that when it comes to the end of the day, I'm not as interested in kind of divulging into the dark side of the human psyche. Apart from Married At First Sight."

Casey says shows are like time capsules - a snapshot of a certain time, and a reminder of who you were when you watched them.

"So much of me returning to The Office or even Friends is, I was 11 watching that show and it completely blew my mind, and to return to that now in my thirties and still feel like, 'Wow, this is such a good piece of television' is a great feeling. But it's also like, take me back to that time of scheduled tv.

"I think it's just a yearning for when we all used to kind of be on the same page, we were all watching the same thing and having the same conversations about it, and that communal element of television is all but gone... returning to when we had a true monoculture and we were enjoying these shows at the same time, we might've been enjoying them with family and friends.

"I genuinely just think the internet has broken our brains and we just want to go back to before that."

Burgess, meanwhile, is planning to rewatch The Sopranos this winter. She admires the show’s layered writing, foreshadowing, and attention to detail.

“It’s full of universal truths,” she says. And there’s comfort in knowing how it ends.

Some rewatch attempts, however, don’t hit quite the same.

"I rewatched Curb Your Enthusiasm recently, and I still like it but I figured out I have a lower tolerance for really obnoxious and difficult people, and I blame Trump honestly. I think I was more tolerant, and in easier times you are more tolerant than in tough times."