Okay, I think I’ve now pieced together why I skipped to the end last night-- I was looking for a recommendation that wasn’t a show my wife had already seen. She watched the bear, killing eve, and happy valley already, so while I would like to watch all three eventually, I’m glad that I’m now armed with a few titles neither of us have seen; the diplomat, the candy one, and I forget what the third one was. But it sounded good.
I mostly don’t like coverage of TV these days, even though there’s plenty of good stuff to watch. Maybe because I’m not in my 20s, but most TV writing I stumble over seems to be written by people I don’t trust. And that’s even when it’s not focused on superhero or sci-fi shows.
With you all the way on DEADLOCH. At first I found Eddie improbably coarse and incompetent. How did she ever hold a job as a detective? She grew on me, though. I’m with you on the many strengths of this series.
Thank you for this, @susanbordo! So many terrific recommendations and assessments. I love, love, love Happy Valley--huge Sally Wainwright fan--but haven't been able to start season 3 because Norton is so persuasively diabolical, and at the moment I'm feeling too fragile. Maybe Perry Mason is just right for now. I'll give it a try! Also, Mare of Easttown without Kate??? I mean, I like Mark Ruffalo, but no.
You've encouraged me to take on Series Three of Happy Valley. We gorged oil the first two seasons two quickly and made the fatal error of watching some of the shows too late so we dozed.
I always liked Shiv the best.
What about a category of less obvious movies and shows worth a rewatch? We recently rewatched Little Miss Sunshine, and I think it holds up brilliantly.
That’s a great idea! Would be such a fun post to write. And I’ve got a long list of movies and shows I’ve loved that have been forgotten.
Dozing while watching! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dozed and rewound and dozed and rewound and watched and dozed, etc. Sometimes it takes me days to get through one episode of something.
I’m kvelling (if you’re not Jewish you’ll have to look it up) over the fact that you liked my girl Siobhan the best.
Best show I've seen, not mentioned in this great and useful roundup: The Gold about a 1970s Brinks robbery in Britain. Hugh Bonneville––aka Lord Grantham–– is excellent as the lead detective. This is a show that held our interest throughout.
PS I’ve always hated that Instagram wouldn’t let you edit a post and now I see that Substack doesn’t either. But I don’t have the energy to delete a comment and retype it just because of a typo, as much as I hate leaving a comment with a typo... ARGH.
I also get frustrated by not being able to edit. But I read it as “your” anyway!! Auto-correction by eye! And so glad you are enjoying my pieces on “Succession”!
I skipped to the end and heard it here first that Mare would be back without Mare. Ugh. That’s what I get for skipping to the end. Tomorrow I’ll go back and read this piece for real, and with a bit of luck, that will mean Mare’s back in now.
Even less chance Mare will be back now. She’s probably on the picket line with her American colleagues. But there’s something good with her already in the can that will be on HBO. Forget the name; will look up.
I do sometimes skip to the end, although I like to think that doesn’t define me. I can’t remember why I skipped through to the end this time; it was late and I was too fried to really read it, but i wanted to see if you covered anything I’d already seen, maybe? But I’ll read it for real today, once I’ve had some coffee.
THAT is true. I subscribe to some crazy amount of people, partly because I’m trying to keep an eye on various types of lunatics. But I also subscribe to some types of writers who are very very bad, for the purpose of doing what one of my few writer friends calls hate reading.
So then I can’t remember which account is which. Do I hate this person? Am I reading them as part of my informal study of conspiracy kooks? Am I reading them because I’m trying to erode my partisanship by reading smart people I can learn from even when I don’t agree with them? Etc.
But-- skipping through to the end is usually because I like the writer and I just don’t have time or energy to read the whole thing. In your case I like to go back and really read, because the writing is worth the trouble. But a lot of people on here, it’s a different situation; I like what they are thinking, and they know some shit I don’t know, but they need an editor.
I’ve always hated editors, but substack makes me appreciate them.
Off topic-- but I just dipped into one of your books (Twilight Zones), and I’m really enjoying it. It’s interesting how even skimming through the notes section quickly turns up a whole bunch of stuff we’re still wrestling with today. Also interesting to see how you’re balancing various critiques of right wing horseshit with some knocks at the left, who was at the time just starting to ramp up some tendencies that have really hardened in recent years. (I probably have that timeline wrong; maybe some of these things were around long before.)
It’s like catnip for me. As much as I like hearing voices on how the left has overplayed its hand recently, it’s also nice to get smart reminders of why the left is still basically my home, even if it’s a home I don’t want to visit any more than I have to because I know I’m going to get nagged about my life choices.
Wow, I didn’t think anyone was reading that one any more!! It’s interesting that you’re looking at it now because I was just thinking how much I “anticipated” in the early 1990’s (most of the essays based on talks I gave then) what has become all-too-true today. Like the wearing down of respect for fact, which I saw happening in imagery before it became the “alternative realities” of Trumpworld. (I proposed a whole book about that way before anyone was even noticing it was happening, but my then-agent didn’t like the idea. ) And I’m now thinking that maybe I’ll do a post on how the whole right-wing attack on “wokeness” (esp in education) started back then (with Bloom, D’Souza, Bellow,etc.) and how the left helped it blossom. I could draw on parts of the “P.C., OJ and Truth” chapter, (not the OJ part) and bring it up to date—from Bloom to DeSantis! Does that sound too dreary?
Not to me it doesn’t. It’s right up my alley. I didn’t read D’Souza, although i hear he’s really gone off the deep end in recent years, like many in his pseudo-intellectual cohort. I did read bloom’s big book, and underlined a bunch of stuff that pissed me off, but as a literary snob I didn’t disagree with everything he said. But anything you write about that area would help me sort out where my snobbery is arguably legit and where it really does come from ignorance about great writers who aren’t white and European. Cf. The infamous bellow observation about paduan Proust. I hate to see that because I’m just starting to read him.
Bellow and cohort (Updike, Mailer, Roth) did write some great stuff. They were early influences on me, if you can believe it! But I’ve never been one to insist on purity from writers, artists, etc. My degree is in philosophy, so if I made the absence of sexism and racism my criteria for inclusion there would have been no-one to study!
There's a lot of good TV out there that I still don't watch. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get back to it. It's taken me this long to start watching FRIENDS. (You miss a lot of things when you work the night shift.)
Problem is, I'd rather spend my time up here readin' and writing', than downstairs, watching the boob-toob. I watch it out of guilt, because I feel I neglect the wife enough isolating myself so I can write. Can't do both.
Me too! All the more reason not to sit in front of the TV. Don't get me wrong, I still binge watch shows, but they're usually shows the wife wants to watch, because I try to leave my weekends for her. We started watching FRIENDS because I worked a lot of afternoon shifts and missed most of it. The same goes for CHEERS, and SOAP. I'm just catching up.
Why would they do a Mare of Easttown without Mare (of Easttown)? 🥴
I know!! It’s crazy.
Okay, I think I’ve now pieced together why I skipped to the end last night-- I was looking for a recommendation that wasn’t a show my wife had already seen. She watched the bear, killing eve, and happy valley already, so while I would like to watch all three eventually, I’m glad that I’m now armed with a few titles neither of us have seen; the diplomat, the candy one, and I forget what the third one was. But it sounded good.
I mostly don’t like coverage of TV these days, even though there’s plenty of good stuff to watch. Maybe because I’m not in my 20s, but most TV writing I stumble over seems to be written by people I don’t trust. And that’s even when it’s not focused on superhero or sci-fi shows.
With you all the way on DEADLOCH. At first I found Eddie improbably coarse and incompetent. How did she ever hold a job as a detective? She grew on me, though. I’m with you on the many strengths of this series.
Thank you for this, @susanbordo! So many terrific recommendations and assessments. I love, love, love Happy Valley--huge Sally Wainwright fan--but haven't been able to start season 3 because Norton is so persuasively diabolical, and at the moment I'm feeling too fragile. Maybe Perry Mason is just right for now. I'll give it a try! Also, Mare of Easttown without Kate??? I mean, I like Mark Ruffalo, but no.
Yes, do give Perry Mason a try. It’s so good. And if you’re feeling fragile, it won’t trigger you. I don’t think!!
Will do!
You've encouraged me to take on Series Three of Happy Valley. We gorged oil the first two seasons two quickly and made the fatal error of watching some of the shows too late so we dozed.
I always liked Shiv the best.
What about a category of less obvious movies and shows worth a rewatch? We recently rewatched Little Miss Sunshine, and I think it holds up brilliantly.
That’s a great idea! Would be such a fun post to write. And I’ve got a long list of movies and shows I’ve loved that have been forgotten.
Dozing while watching! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dozed and rewound and dozed and rewound and watched and dozed, etc. Sometimes it takes me days to get through one episode of something.
I’m kvelling (if you’re not Jewish you’ll have to look it up) over the fact that you liked my girl Siobhan the best.
I am Jewish and I'm glad to find I'm not the only meshugganah dozer!
Best show I've seen, not mentioned in this great and useful roundup: The Gold about a 1970s Brinks robbery in Britain. Hugh Bonneville––aka Lord Grantham–– is excellent as the lead detective. This is a show that held our interest throughout.
Where is it streaming?
Prime and Paramount.
Wonderful. I need a good series!
Yes-- Deadloch-- also very strong. Thanks!
This was an awesome post and I wouldn’t have found it (you) without ‘Notes’ so... thank you for linking it on ‘Notes’. And for your great writing.
Now off to charge my phone so I can come back and read your older stuff 😊
So glad you found me!! And thank you!
I am still missing Succession so reading you posts about it were awesome today. Esp the one about Shiv..
*your
PS I’ve always hated that Instagram wouldn’t let you edit a post and now I see that Substack doesn’t either. But I don’t have the energy to delete a comment and retype it just because of a typo, as much as I hate leaving a comment with a typo... ARGH.
I also get frustrated by not being able to edit. But I read it as “your” anyway!! Auto-correction by eye! And so glad you are enjoying my pieces on “Succession”!
I skipped to the end and heard it here first that Mare would be back without Mare. Ugh. That’s what I get for skipping to the end. Tomorrow I’ll go back and read this piece for real, and with a bit of luck, that will mean Mare’s back in now.
So you’re a skip-to-the-end kind of person?
Even less chance Mare will be back now. She’s probably on the picket line with her American colleagues. But there’s something good with her already in the can that will be on HBO. Forget the name; will look up.
I do sometimes skip to the end, although I like to think that doesn’t define me. I can’t remember why I skipped through to the end this time; it was late and I was too fried to really read it, but i wanted to see if you covered anything I’d already seen, maybe? But I’ll read it for real today, once I’ve had some coffee.
Hey, I often skip pieces entirely. You can usually tell from the first sentence whether you’d do better with a Hallmark card.
THAT is true. I subscribe to some crazy amount of people, partly because I’m trying to keep an eye on various types of lunatics. But I also subscribe to some types of writers who are very very bad, for the purpose of doing what one of my few writer friends calls hate reading.
So then I can’t remember which account is which. Do I hate this person? Am I reading them as part of my informal study of conspiracy kooks? Am I reading them because I’m trying to erode my partisanship by reading smart people I can learn from even when I don’t agree with them? Etc.
But-- skipping through to the end is usually because I like the writer and I just don’t have time or energy to read the whole thing. In your case I like to go back and really read, because the writing is worth the trouble. But a lot of people on here, it’s a different situation; I like what they are thinking, and they know some shit I don’t know, but they need an editor.
I’ve always hated editors, but substack makes me appreciate them.
Off topic-- but I just dipped into one of your books (Twilight Zones), and I’m really enjoying it. It’s interesting how even skimming through the notes section quickly turns up a whole bunch of stuff we’re still wrestling with today. Also interesting to see how you’re balancing various critiques of right wing horseshit with some knocks at the left, who was at the time just starting to ramp up some tendencies that have really hardened in recent years. (I probably have that timeline wrong; maybe some of these things were around long before.)
It’s like catnip for me. As much as I like hearing voices on how the left has overplayed its hand recently, it’s also nice to get smart reminders of why the left is still basically my home, even if it’s a home I don’t want to visit any more than I have to because I know I’m going to get nagged about my life choices.
Wow, I didn’t think anyone was reading that one any more!! It’s interesting that you’re looking at it now because I was just thinking how much I “anticipated” in the early 1990’s (most of the essays based on talks I gave then) what has become all-too-true today. Like the wearing down of respect for fact, which I saw happening in imagery before it became the “alternative realities” of Trumpworld. (I proposed a whole book about that way before anyone was even noticing it was happening, but my then-agent didn’t like the idea. ) And I’m now thinking that maybe I’ll do a post on how the whole right-wing attack on “wokeness” (esp in education) started back then (with Bloom, D’Souza, Bellow,etc.) and how the left helped it blossom. I could draw on parts of the “P.C., OJ and Truth” chapter, (not the OJ part) and bring it up to date—from Bloom to DeSantis! Does that sound too dreary?
Be honest. I count on you for that!
This is really helpful to hear this from you; it’s always tempting to tamp down my impure thoughts. As it were.
Not to me it doesn’t. It’s right up my alley. I didn’t read D’Souza, although i hear he’s really gone off the deep end in recent years, like many in his pseudo-intellectual cohort. I did read bloom’s big book, and underlined a bunch of stuff that pissed me off, but as a literary snob I didn’t disagree with everything he said. But anything you write about that area would help me sort out where my snobbery is arguably legit and where it really does come from ignorance about great writers who aren’t white and European. Cf. The infamous bellow observation about paduan Proust. I hate to see that because I’m just starting to read him.
Bellow and cohort (Updike, Mailer, Roth) did write some great stuff. They were early influences on me, if you can believe it! But I’ve never been one to insist on purity from writers, artists, etc. My degree is in philosophy, so if I made the absence of sexism and racism my criteria for inclusion there would have been no-one to study!
There's a lot of good TV out there that I still don't watch. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get back to it. It's taken me this long to start watching FRIENDS. (You miss a lot of things when you work the night shift.)
Oy! You can skip Friends and go straight to one of the ones I recommend.
Problem is, I'd rather spend my time up here readin' and writing', than downstairs, watching the boob-toob. I watch it out of guilt, because I feel I neglect the wife enough isolating myself so I can write. Can't do both.
Yeah, I have the privilege of being retired, so I can do both.
Me too! All the more reason not to sit in front of the TV. Don't get me wrong, I still binge watch shows, but they're usually shows the wife wants to watch, because I try to leave my weekends for her. We started watching FRIENDS because I worked a lot of afternoon shifts and missed most of it. The same goes for CHEERS, and SOAP. I'm just catching up.