Ah, another lay monastic like me, I suppose. 
I would, right now, become a monastic if not for taking care of family members with health issues. I basically live like a monastic (5 precepts), really not with self-imposed restrictions (sometimes I watch TV with family for communal time, for example, I rarely ever watch anything for entertainment for myself).
I’ve realised a while ago that, anything I sought from entertainment (drama, life lessons, immersion), the suttas cover it all. If you want fantastic stories, there’s stories with devas and brahmas. If you want ethical lessons, there’s no shortage of them. There’s weird Jataka lessons. There’s poetry.
If my mind gets dulled with Pāli suttas all the time, then I spice it up, look up some Dōgen, browse a few Mahayana stories to steer me back to reality.
This is an important distinction, one I’ve come to realise more and more. People want to chat about current events, talking about purchases, about politics, about economy, all that normie stuff, and I’m not just uninformed but completely incapable of sustaining attention to such conversations. They’re just moot to me.
I translate suttas at home, perhaps I wouldn’t even bother in a monastic setting but it allows me to provide material and a story when people ask me what I do all day.
With that said, I don’t think viewing the path as a prescription, instead of a description, is a healthy thing for a lay person. If you approach the holy life as a “I should do this” instead of knowing you should do this, then it’s just recipe for disaster, another form of craving, another form of ego-making.
The healthiest thing to do as a lay monastic is to keep enjoying the life, news and media and all that to the extend they draw you in, while keeping in mind the teachings, always being mindful. Asking yourself “Was this really a good way to spend my time?” after watching a movie, eating an especially well-made food, all that stuff.
I can see how a person would want nothing to do with any media, stories, entertainment. Sometimes I hardly even want to read the suttas if I can just meditate. I think those rules are important, not as a restriction even, but if you think not reading a novel or watching movies is a torture, boring, then you’re really not ready for a monastic life either. And that’s really fine. Monastic life should be reserved for people who just have no interest left whatsoever in lay life to the level of it being a burden and an obstacle to their understanding and immersion.
It’s like swearing off lying. Like, I wouldn’t take the precept if I didn’t know, for sure, that lying is always bad to me, period. It’s like me telling myself “Damn it man, never again.” Rest of the 8 precepts should be viewed like that. Unless you know and understand why entertainment is bad for you, unless you’re sick of it and like “Damn, never again”, then taking 8 precepts only means you’re going to break it. Better to watch entertainment and understand why they are bad for you, rather than trying to operate on faith alone, if your faith isn’t that strong to understand why entertainment is bad for you.