24 October, 2016

By VIVA Team

There's plenty of boring TV, but Napflix is unique in actually AIMING to be boring.

There’s plenty of boring TV, but Napflix is unique in actually AIMING to be boring.

It might be boring TV, but that’s the whole point: Napflix is a newly launched online channel designed to send the viewer off to blissful sleep…

Although famed for siestas, Spaniards actually sleep some of the fewest hours in Europe, regularly rising at 7am and not going to bed until at least midnight, on average. The country’s “work hard, play hard” culture is well engrained, but increasingly, the siesta is not – and as Spain adopts a more western European working calendar, many Spaniards are finding that they are losing their middle-of-the-day nap.

Now, however, two entrepreneurial Spaniards (of which there are many) have hit upon Napflix, a channel designed to bring on 40 winks faster than you can say “how many sheep?”

“We all know the feeling of insomnia,” said the channel’s creators. “Your body wants sleep but your mind is still awake and active. So how can we steady our mind? Napflix is a video platform where you can find the most silent and sleepy content selection to relax your brain and easily fall asleep.”

Included in the channel’s first programming schedule is a two-hour lecture from an esteemed physics professor in which the complexities of Einstein are discussed at length. Another is a 54-minute epic piece of filmmaking where rotisserie chickens turn on their spit… over… and over… and over again.

Still awake? Well how about a clip of a section of the 1992 Tour de France, or a spot of curling? There is also a four-hour World Chess Championship showdown from 2013 to get you in the mood for some shuteye, while those in search of something a little more traditional can also enjoy a loop of waves lapping at the shore, a candle burning slowly to its base, or a crackling and cosy fireplace.

“There are a lot of videos on youTube that we were able to put on our channel that will really help people to sleep, said Victor de Tena, one of the platform’s creators. “For example, a game of cricket really is very boring.” Depends who you ask, of course.

“We choose the content based on how boring it is, or for the elevator music that sometimes goes with it.”