There is something I must explain about my taste in entertainment. I don’t like horror films, and I don’t like graphic violence. That considerably narrows the range of what I watch. I want to be entertained or learn, not to be terrified or depressed by what I choose to see.
Having said that, I confess that one of my TV favorites (now an oldie) was “The Wire.” It is a series about the long-running struggles between drug dealers and the police in Baltimore. It aired several years ago, back before there was streaming. This was the series that overcame my aversion to verbal vulgarity because the usual curse words are spoken constantly and eventually I barely noticed them. There is a lot of violence but it is not gratuitous. It is what you would expect to see, given the subject matter.
The stories in “The Wire” are gripping, and the characters are sharply drawn. My favorite character was Omar, a good-bad guy. My favorite scene is set in the local high school. The local police chief has come to address the students in the gym. They are seated around him, on all four sides of the room. He can’t get many words out because the students are unruly, throwing paper balls and other objects across the room and raising a ruckus. He can’t control them. They ignore him. Then the principal walks in. In contrast to the police officer, who is a strong tall white man, she is a small, slightly rotund African American woman. The minute she walks to the center of the room, the students fall silent. The room is hushed, and the students listen to her every word. I have never forgotten that dramatic portrayal of authority.
My current favorite is “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.” Phryne Fisher is a lady detective in Australia in the 1920s. In every episode, she solves a murder. She is played by the gorgeous Australian actress Essie Davis. She is the epitome of style, wearing a different and elegant outfit in every scene. She can do anything: she flies a plane, she drives a racing car, she can handle weapons with ease, she is an expert in every imaginable activity, she is totally fearless and always beautiful. The local police inspector reluctantly allows her to solve murders, then realizes she is a great asset and invites her to help him. Miss Fisher is thoroughly modern in her mores and her intelligence.
Another program I enjoy is “Call the Midwife.” It appears on public television. It is a series about midwives who live in a convent in Britain in the 1950s and deliver babies in a working class district. The stories are often inspiring, sometimes sad, but always about the values of kindness, humaneness, caring, and love.
i have also enjoyed “Last Tango in Halifax,” which is streaming. It is a BBC series about an elderly man and woman who had been crazy about one another as teens, lost touch, married other people, and found each other 60 years later and fell in love. Both have incredibly dysfunctional families, and everyone has secrets. One plus: no matter how difficult your family, you will feel like it is completely normal after watching a few episodes of this show.
That’s what I like. What do you like?
Doc Martin.
Ditto
Almost everything Masterpiece. CBK
I like Super Soul Sunday in which Oprah interviews spiritual leaders. They promote the good that should exist in this world.
I also watch many reruns of “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost”. I’m a hooked Patrick Swayze fan who still ogles him.
In general, I like movies that are international intrigue. I like movies where people care about each other. I’ve deleted some movies when there was endless killings with no apparent reason in the plot.
Around Christmas time I watch Hallmark movies even though I know the end of the movie before 5 minutes is up. The handsomest man always gets the gorgeous leading lady.
Sometimes I watch Sci-Fi movies. I’m intrigued by what is possible, even if it exists only in someone’s imagination. Sometimes I watch programs on the History Channel and I have continuing soap operas on Masterpiece Theatre. I’m waiting for the coming season of Poldark. Poldark is a British historical period drama television series based on the novels of the same title by Winston Graham and starring Aidan Turner in the lead role. [Another one who forever good to people and is ‘not bad on the eyes’.]
Love the fast paced romantic adventure of CBS Blood and Thunder! Also, Instinct and The Good Fight–all CBS!!
Killing Eve!!!!!
I am a fan of all the PBS shows you mention along with “The Durrells of Corfu,” a delightful tale of a British widow that moves her family to Greece. I’ll watch any British mystery. My guilty pleasure is some of the reno shows on HGTV along with International House Hunters. I can’t resist the armchair tour of so many destinations.
My husband and son were big fans of “The Wire.” I tried to watch it, but couldn’t, due to the violence. I cannot watch violence or brutality. I walk out. My husband and son are also big fans of “Game of Thrones.” I always say it was an epic show I half watched.
Diane On PLAY, STORY, and the development of metaphor, here is an excellent essay from AEON online magazine–with snips below:
SNIP: “From preschool onwards, academic classroom-based instruction soaks up vital time that might be spent on endeavours elemental to forming the imagination; in particular, play. Serious questions have been raised by, among others, the psychologist Peter Gray in Aeon about the consequences of this hyper-focus on early, high-stakes academic study – including skyrocketing rates of childhood anxiety and depression, a decline in empathy, and a rise in narcissism. We are interested in yet another casualty of this trend – the importance of metaphoric thinking.” . . .
SNIP: “As we see it, metaphor exists – and relies upon – the complex, emotionally resonant, arresting connections we make. These linkages, between ourselves and the world, require a degree of primary experience, as well as sensitivity to the nature and details of that experience. Metaphor is the knot between language and image, between language and sensory experience, and between language and narrative. Indeed, a growing body of research supports the view that metaphoric thinking could be deeply tied to empathy. . . .Literalism, abbreviation and emojis stand in for words and feelings, Nor is metaphoric thinking limited to the creative arts. . . . ” CBK
https://aeon.co/essays/metaphors-grow-the-mind-and-feed-the-soul-dont-lose-them?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=3adb08bae9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_01_12_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-3adb08bae9-70395829
Thank you, CBK, for this link. The article does a great job of discussing the negative consequences of the “valorization of the literal” that one finds in Common [sic] Core [sic]-based curricula and pedagogy. And it’s also interesting because it gives some examples of a fascinating trend in literary and philosophical studies–the application of scientific techniques to these. There is much to be learned from scientific study of the differences in the emerging kinds of literacy in the Internet age and from study of the devastating effects that the Common [sic] Core [sic] has had on how young people interact with texts and on the kinds of texts that they produce. AEON is an astonishingly rich repository of a lot of fascinating contemporary thinking.
Here, some of my own thoughts about what the Common [sic] Core [sic] has done to instruction on metaphor: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/
My favorite show on television is, of course, Fox and Friends! Just kidding. I like to watch classic movies on TV. I never tire of Humphrey Bogart. Here’s looking at you, kid.
I’ve been recording every noir film that shows up on TCM. Kansas City Confidential had a particularly great plot. Right now I’m enjoying The Asphalt Jungle.
The Third Man is great too.
That is a perfect film. I watch it every couple of years. Also loved Orson Welles in The Stranger, and Touch of Evil.
“The Spanish Princess” is about Katherine of Aragon and the path that she took to become the first wife of Henry VIII. There is a disclaimer at the end of each episode that states that some liberties have been taken with the story line to provide for an entertaining experience. Still, I have found it to be mostly accurate and very entertaining. On my cable lineup, it is broadcast on the STARZ network. The first year (eight episodes) can now be watched on demand. A second (and last) year is in production.
I also watch “The Spanish Princess”. I see the disclaimer at the end and figure it is like ‘true stuff’ from Hollywood…spiced up for the audience. If it is ‘mostly accurate’, I can say maybe I’m maybe learning something.
The rarely seen movie that is occasionally shown on TCM – Robert Newton in Obsession, also titled The Hidden Room, is a fun noir. A psychiatrist (Newton) hatches the perfect murder-of his serially unfaithful younger wife’s latest lover, an American journalist. A little dog plays an important role in this cat and mouse-type thriller. Wonderful scenes when a Columbo-type inspector from Scotland Yard shows up at Newton’s door to investigate the disappearance of the wife’s… dog? This movie was made late in Newton’s career; and they had to work around his drinking problem.
I was a fan of Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown and long before that Northern Exposure with wonderfully eccentric residents of a fictional small town in Alaska.
Recently I have enjoyed the decade-by-decade shows on CNN.
On weekends I routinely check the fare on C-Span.
I often escape to Turner Classic Movies.
I have also been watching Pit Bulls and Parolles, The Zoo and some of the really amazing work of veterinarians on Animal Planet.
I was moved by Hidden Figures.
I love dark, disturbing, dystopian movies and fiction because, as Leonard Cohen put it:
There’s a crack, a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
I recommend the series “Counterpart,” and the mini-series “SS-GB.” Both are dystopian with a twist of modern history– i.e., they could have happened if…
Thanks, bethree! I will look into these. And rewatch “Singing in the Rain.” Hmmmm. How might I put a dystopian twist on the latter? And would Diane Ravitch ever forgive me?
I LOVE “Counterpart”. It is part of my love of Sci-Fi stuff.
maybe make it acid rain?
p.s. Bob, the novel Soumission by Houllebecq (Submission, transl Lorin Stein) is an interesting dystopian ride: sinister sunny France in 2022, w/plenty of dark humor.
Carol– ooh, yeah! Hubby & I can’t wait until next season. Realized I have completely under-appreciated J K Simmons.
I’ve been watching a lot of old tv shows lately. The Odd Couple is one of my all-time favorites. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is fantastic, too. I love the 70’s shows – The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman (nobody played her better than Lynda Carter!), Charlie’s Angels (I know it may not be politically correct to say so! Buy, hey! I love them!). The Carol Burnett Show was a favorite, too. Quincy and Frasier ( a little later, I know) were great. And, of course, nothing beats the 70’s Saturday Night Live. How’s that for a blast from the past!!!!
Dear Diane,
What a pleasure to open the site this morning to your post! Thank you for inviting us into your living room, as always.
I am still trying to convince my husband to watch The Wire. I binge-watched it a few years ago. It remains one of the best series I’ve seen, and I’m ready to enjoy it again. I developed an appreciation for the talent of Idris Elba—never realizing he was the same actor I’d enjoyed years before in the BBC mini-series “Luther.”
For me, Boardwalk Empire is in the same category – another where the terrific Michael K Williams creates a good-bad guy (“Chalky” White), one of the leads. Much of our enjoyment was in getting a new slant on the gritty history linking NYC and NJ during Prohibition. Buscemi’s character development of the complex Nucky Thompson keeps you watching.
I recommend “Seven Seconds,” an intense 10-episode drama which is notable for the number of well-drawn, thoroughly human characters who keep developing depth as the plot advances. Regina King is especially impressive. Jersey City itself is like a character too: as in The Wire, all different aspects of the local govt and community alternately work together and against each other, here focused on trying to resolve the fallout from a tragic accident?/ crime? and its cover-up. It never does resolve – Netflix decided not to make another season—but it’s OK because in a way the whole story is about the tensions created in the community when there are no easy answers.
My husband is particularly fond of the droll characters in BBC ensemble series. He doesn’t enjoy watching mysteries again (as I do), but he will watch Hyacinth Bucket’s Keeping Up Appearances episodes multiple times, just as he will Seinfeld or The Honeymooners. Our tastes meet on this re: Doc Martin, another show where the community itself is one of the main characters.
The year The Wire concentrated on schools should be required in every teacher preparation program … You should watch “Rita,” a Danish Series about a teacher, on Netflix, a wonderful heroine, and, understanding the day to day life of a teacher
One of my favorites: “Mister Ed”. What made the show so funny, was that the horse was the smartest “person” on the show. Ed had a superior IQ, and spoke fluent Spanish as well as a concise and articulate English. The other characters were all morons.
This show delighted me as a child. I bet the child in me would still love it.
I, too, enjoy Ms Fisher’s Murder mysteries.
I love Dottie- her indispensable and very valuable assistant; the costumes remind me of the 1920 or Great Gatsby era! I’ m into Brit detective stories and police crimes..I enjoy Death in Paradise, Father Brown, Midsommer Murders,Endeavor, the spin off from Inspector Morse, A Touch of Frost and the Canadian Murdoch Mysteries which is the beginning of forensics…reminds me of CSI but in the early 20th century! The Brits have a way with solving crime on their shows of intrigue!
Northern Exposure is my favorite network show of all time. It had so many interesting and strange characters with unexpected stories. I also liked the cultural divide and the “fish out of water” story of the main character, Joel Fleischman.
I am amazed that any of you have time for anything but research. I am so busy that I seldom watch any TV except to go to sleep in a chair with the weather just around the corner only to awaken with one of the late night guys making bad jokes.
Nothing has ever been better than Sid Caesar. Until Breaking Bad showed up.
OMG–for laughter, you can’t beat “Your Show of Shows!” My husband & I were lucky enough to see Caesar & Imogene Coca live in Chicag; they did the From Here to Eternity skit, & Coca threw the artificial flower from her hair into the audience; my husband caught it, & it has an honored spot on our bedroom dresser.
“Breaking Bad” is dramedy perfection, from the first episode through the brilliant series finale. Explains to what lengths a cancer-diagnosed high school teacher has to go to make a living/pay for health care in America.
& to Gene Glass at the very top: I, too, am a huge “Doc Martin” fan.
To that end, I highly recommend the British version (not the later, American-made rip-off) of an hilarious Martin Clunes show “Men Behaving Badly,” which is readily available on YouTube. The first season’s opening credits will make laughter tears roll down your face (even my husband–who hates, hates, hates British tv & movies–loved it & laughed heartily). You’ll also enjoy the theme song…
Diane & all, watch & enjoy!
My wife reminded me tonight that Blackadder has long been my favorite with Sid Caesar. She’s correct.
Re Last Tango; If you search Netflix and PBS for the British actress Nicola Walker, who played Derek Jacobi’s tired looking daughter who ran the farm, .she’s in a lot of good stuff. Unforgotten, River, Scott and Bailey (UK version of Cagney and Lacey)- Walker doesn’t appear until Season 2). Another actress to search because her work is interesting: Ruth Wilson- British actress known for The Affair (which we did not watch) and Luther which we did watch- she played the psycho daughter with the odd upper lip who murdered her parents, escaped from the prison for the criminally insane; and then developed a relationship with Luther (Idris Elba at his sexiest).. I especially enjoyed the PBS Mrs Wilson” on Masterpiece in which Ruth Wilson portrayed her own grandmother, who discovered her late husband of 20 years was a serial adulterer and her sons had siblings unknown to all.
I especially like The Marvelous Mrs Maisel on Amazon Prime- waiting for season 3.. And right now I’m watching “The Good Fight” (spin off of The Good Wife) – Season 1 now showing free on CBS-instead of CBS streaming channel which would cost extra.Also my husband and I just started Netflix original The Kominsky Method with Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin- the first two episodes- so far so good-fine acting -many funny lines but emotional moments as well
PS If you can find the Swedish version of Wallander (not Ken Brannagh) – you have to search it as “Henning Mankell’s Wallander” we saw it on Netflix-not sure if they still have it.- we recommend that as well- esp seasons 1 and 2. I assume you’ve already seen the wonderful “Foyle’s War, which led me to check out other movies and tv work by Michael Kitchen.
I too adore Idris Elba and encountered him in The Wire. I started watching Luther because of him but the violence was too much for me.
Myrna Gottlieb And remember, a younger Kitchen was in “Out of Africa,” which was wonderful, but which I watch sometimes just to feel again what the music does for my soul. CBK
I haven’t seen Miss Fisher, but it frequently pops up based on my previous viewing. I love the other shows you mention. Here are a few of my recommendations: A Place to Call Home (Australian soap opera), In the Line of Duty (British detective show), Bodyguard (British thriller), Deep State (EPIX thriller), Ackley Bridge (British show about a multicultural high school).
Fun post, Diane.
Because we don’t have cable or satellite etc.. we rely on the old antenna up in the attic of our 160-year-old home -and a very clear line of sight off this mountain to Scranton, Pa.
There’s a station or two there that play old TV shows. (plus lots of ads aimed at oldsters like me, ha, ha.)
MASH has held up very well over time. And, for a while, we were watching a lot of All in the Family, too. (What a groundbreaking show.)
Considering those two programs, who woulda’ thunk our country could end up here, the way it is, in 2019???
We also still watch the network news, old farts that we are.
I remember listening to the trusted voice of Walter Cronkite as if it was yesterday.
The moon landing, the Woodstock Festival (which was just down the road from my school.) and, of course, Stonewall.
It’s actually a big summer for these not-so-long ago images and film.
For some time now, I have been watching CSI. I started with the original CSI that takes place in Las Vegas and when I finished with that, I moved on to CSI Miami (still watching). When that one done, I’ll watch CSI New York. I limit how much I watch each night to two episodes so it is taking a lot of days to watch 34 seasons for all three. I estimate about 374 days in all.
My favorite series is “Elementary” with Lucy Liu as Doctor Joan Watson and Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes. Sat to say, the series ended after the 6th season but I will watch again, and again, and again. I’ve already seen it twice.
If I get tired of any CSI, I’ll take a break and watch “Elementary’s” six seasons again.
This is my very short list. :o)
My favorite tv show is “Two and a Half Men,” The episodes with Charlie Sheen). It witty, real (fart jokes), and rather raunchy. Funny thing is I didn’t discover it until it was already off the air. I had avoided it because I thought Sheen was a pig (in real life). He is in the movie, but he’s likeable. I don’t care for the episodes with Ashton Kutcher as much.
I like old movies, particularly ones of Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and James Mason. My last British crush, Albert Finney, died earlier this year.
One of my favorite movies is “Into the West” with Gabriel Byrne. It takes place in 80s/90s Ireland and follows two young “traveler” boys, travelers being basically gypsies. It’s a lovely heartwarming film and I sometimes show it to my classes.