How did Dad TV get so popular?

What do Reacher, Masters of the Air and The Terminal List have in common other than being shows about burly men and brotherhood? They're all considered Dad TV. 

Do you have to be a dad to watch Dad TV? What makes certain TV shows Dad TV?

TV critic Eric Deggans and culture commentator Matt Hart join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to chat about what defines the comfort genre, who exactly is watching, and why Dad TV seems to be hitting its peak now.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Eric, I will start with you on this one. Please attempt to define Dad TV for us.

Eric: Sure. It's not saying that these shows are just for dads. What it's saying is that these shows were developed from the perspective and focused on what dads like. They were configured to appeal to middle-aged males — and middle aged-males often are dads.

Elamin: The first time you meet Reacher, he had just finished walking like 20 miles. And it's because he is showing up in this town. Because he wants to visit the birth site of this blues musician. He's following a little niche interest that he has and he gets into trouble. But he finds his way out of it. 

Matt: He's basically an emotionally crippled super hunk who is also a drifter who gets justified violence taken care of. 

Elamin: You know what? That's a very apt way of putting it. That is quite a cynical way to go. But let's get into the tropes and the cliches of the genre. Eric, what are the tropes and the cliches of what makes TV Dad TV? 

Eric: It stars a man who is usually middle-aged or on the young end of middle-aged or acts middle-aged. Reacher is played by an actor who's a little young for that. But the way he acts is kind of middle-aged.

If you think about the lead character in CSI. Or you think about NCIS and Mark Harmon's character. You think about a show like Longmire and its character Walt Longmire — they're often loners. They have trouble attaching themselves to people. And the major conflicts in the show are them feeling responsible for other people and navigating that. It's also genres that men find appealing, like westerns or action. Then there's often a component where there's a lot of male camaraderie. They have a crew that they maybe work with. 

Matt: For me  — I'll take you to task over this —the number one dad show is Yellowstone. It's got all these things in it that are tenants of [Dad TV]. It's got old school ethics, that's a big one. There are hot ladies in it. The key is suppressing emotions. We don't talk, we don't cry, we have bourbon.

Elamin: Yellowstone is a show where emotions come out in violence and they don't really come out in any other kind of expression, right? Even the dialogue, Eric, is written in these terse short bursts. No one has long sentences of dialogue, you know?

Eric: That is true. Although I think that Yellowstone also mixes in a lot of elements of soap opera, that aren't typically found in Dad TV shows. And I think that's one reason why it has a wide appeal. But that's also another reason why I would say it has a lot of elements of Dad TV, but it doesn't distil the Dad TV vibe in quite the same way as Reacher does, or a show like Bosch does, or a show like Longmire, where there's much less of the emotionalism than in a soap opera 

It's much less about relationships between the characters, and it's much more about the mystery that's at hand. Or the action that they have to do. And the killer they're pursuing and not so much, "My crazy daughter is my heir apparent and I'm not sure she should take over the company."

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Amelia Eqbal.