Back in the olden days it was easy; there were only five channels to choose from. The likelihood of a new show airing without you knowing anything about it was slim - unless of course you grew up in one of those families where the channel selector was welded onto the ABC.

With the advent of, first, pay TV and then all the various streaming services, suddenly there were so many channels, so many things to watch that it was oh so easy for a show to slip through the cracks.

And that's not including social media apps like TikTok that the kids seem to enjoy watching more than old-fashioned television.

So where does that leave a new TV show that wants to attract eyeballs?

Well, they could back themselves and believe the show is so awesome that word of mouth will carry it over the line.

That while a smallish number of people will watch right from the start, but they'll rave to their friends about it.

And who hasn't watched a show solely because someone told them it was great? I know I have done that - when we first got Netflix I put out a call on Facebook for recommendations. Caught up with heaps of good shows that way.

There is another option - hype and novelty.

The makers create a show with some sort of twist or unusual approach and then sit back as media outlets pick up on that quirk and hype it up.

People then read about it and think "oh, that sounds interesting and different. I think I'll watch that".

The tricky thing here is to ensure that the novelty is not the only thing the show has going for it.,

That's the fate that befell the Black Mirror movie spin-off Bandersnatch. The gimmick here was that it's a TV version of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books.

At various times in the movie - which is about a video game programmer - a prompt appears on the screen giving you two choices for the main character.

The gimmick is the best thing about the movie, but the need to keep making choices quickly starts to wear thin and ruins any chance of a narrative flow developing.

While Black Mirror is an excellent TV series, Bandersnatch is easily its worst episode.

More recently, the Netflix series Kaleidoscope came up with a gimmick clearly designed to attract attention.

The eight-part series centres around master thief Leo Pap, who sets up a $7 million heist as an act of revenge against security giant Roger Salas.

So it's a heist concept, very much in the Ocean's Eleven vein - but with much less humour.

The gimmick? Each Netflix viewer will be shown the show in a different order - with everyone getting the same final episode.

Viewers can also choose their own order - of which there are apparently more than 5000 options.

That gimmick causes a few problems - one of which is it stops you from talking about the show to your friends.

If they're watching it in a different order to you, then you're not seeing the same thing at the same time. You might both be on the third episode, but they're different episodes.

Also a problem is that the very nature of the gimmick means each episode has to be self-contained.

There's no way they can have a cliffhanger at the end of one episode because there's no telling what a viewer's next episode will be.

That also means information has to be repeated in multiple episodes because the narrative flow will be different for each viewer.

The gimmick also assures some viewers of a less enjoyable experience than others. For instance, if Netflix starts you with the episode centred on the plotting of the heist, you have no understanding of who any of the characters are and therefore no investment.

Or (spoiler alert!) if it starts you off with the episode featuring the death of a character there are no indications of how you're supposed to feel about it. Were they a good guy or a bad guy?

Ultimately the gimmick robs Kaleidoscope of any depth in the storyline - in fact it values the gimmick over the story.