Category: TV

Happy young woman watching TV

2020 in TV: My Favorites

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When I went back through my blog posts for 2020, I was surprised at how many TV series I had watched, particularly since March. I have listed only a selection, but these are the ones I thought were the best or enjoyed the most. In several cases, the categories are in order of preference rather than alphabetically. Happy viewing!

TV MINISERIES

DETECTIVES, CRIMES & SPIES 

Acceptable Risk (Acorn)

An Irish series set in Dublin and Montreal, this pharmaceutical puzzler involves the murder of a high-level drug company executive and the investigation that follows, initiated by his wife, a lawyer for the corporation.  One of the best series we viewed this year!

DCI Banks (Amazon Prime)

Helen, Alan Banks, Annie (tv.eiga.com)

Complex series set in Yorkshire with fully developed characters based on the novels of Peter Robinson.

The Night Manager (Amazon Prime)

A suspenseful series based on the novel by John le Carre.  Hotel manager Jonathan Pine is recruited to spy on wealthy businessman Richard Roper who is suspected of illegal arms deals.  Hugh Laurie is perfect as Roper.

The Sommerdahl Murders (Acorn)

Danish detective Dan Sommerdahl works with his crime technician wife Marianne and his best friend, who’s very friendly with Marianne.  A lively series from Scandinavia.

Inspector Vivaldi Mysteries (Amazon Prime)

Wonderful Italian detective series set in Trieste.  Frederico Vivaldi is the lead detective and his son Stefano is also a police officer.  Their relationship is strained while Stefano’s mother, Laura, tries to ease the tension.

(pbs.org)

Flesh and Blood (PBS Masterpiece)

Her three grown children are distraught when their widowed mother, played by Francesca Annis, takes up with a retired doctor.  A fascinating thriller with a twist!

Mystery Road (Amazon Prime)

Detective Jay Swan is sent to help find two missing boys in Australia’s outback.  Great portrayal of the mistrust and suspicion between the indigenous people and whites.  

DOCUMENTARIES

Lenox Hill (Netflix)

Dedicated NYC hospital neurosurgeons and their patients in an emotionally charged and incredibly candid series. The lead doctors are graduates of Penn’s medical school.

Soldier Father Son (New York Times)

Single father, a soldier, raising his two sons, one of whom follows in his footsteps.

HISTORICAL DRAMAS

Belgravia (Epix)

London, 1840, striving middle class family vs. upper class toffs in a tangled story of love, marriage and ambition. Based on Julian Fellowes’ novel of the same name.

The English Game (Netflix)

A most absorbing series about the game of soccer and the rivalry between the mill workers’ teams and those of the arrogant rich.  This is Julian Fellowes at his best!

DIVERSITY AND DIFFERENCE

Self-Made (Netflix)

Madam CJ Walker was a Black cosmetics entrepreneur, a success story in an earlier and more difficult time for women and minorities.

A Secret Love (Netflix)

A documentary about a lesbian couple who lived together in Canada for six decades.  Most of that time they were closeted and presented themselves as simply close friends.

FAMILY DYNAMICS

The Restaurant (Our Time is Now) (Amazon Prime, Sundance)

This Swedish series follows restaurant owners Helga and her adult children, Gustaf, Peter, and Nina, from 1945 to the early 1970’s.  A social history of the era midst the trials and tribulations of love, marriage, and career.  Excellent!

Unorthodox (Netflix)

This semi-autobiographical series follows Esther Shapiro, a Hasidic Jew, through marriage and flight from her home in Brooklyn to refuge in Berlin.  

From Father to Daughter (Amazon Prime)

The coming of age of the daughters in an Italian winemaking family.  Documents these females’ evolving role in the family and the business over several decades.

LONG-RUNNING SERIES

Endeavour (PBS)

(radiotimes.com)

This year was Season 7 of the adventures of Morse and Inspector Thursday, and it was as good as ever!

Grantchester (PBS Masterpiece)

Season 5 was the second season with Will Davenport as the new vicar replacing Sydney.  While it took some adjustment for us, Will has settled in. These episodes with his sidekick Geordie were both deeper and darker in character.  

NOTEWORTHY FILMS

(vulture.com)

Since we haven’t been in a movie theater since Covid-19, we’ve seen relatively few films. Nonetheless, these several stood out and are in order of preference.

1917

A grim, painful, and gripping focus on one particular battle during WWI.  

On the Basis of Sex

We viewed this after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.  It’s a marvelous testament to how she advanced equal rights early on in her career.

Radioactive (Amazon Prime)

This is a biographical film based on the graphic novel of the same name by Lauren Redniss.  Some interesting special effects and a sometimes strange juxtaposition of modern-day events with those of Marie Curie’s life. Still worth watching.

The Return (Acorn)

After serving ten years in prison for the killing of her doctor husband, Lizzie returns to her small hometown in Ireland.  Poignant and moving with Julie Walters in the lead role.

Note: Header image of young woman watching TV from vectorstock.com

Tidy December Sunrise

December Diversions

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ON THE SCREEN

Holiday Cooking Class 

The other evening, we enjoyed a cooking demonstration.  Clarkson University, the Chief Penguin’s alma mater, invited alumni to see and join their campus chef in the preparation of several dishes.  They included a colorful cranberry and whiskey cocktail, baked brie, baby potatoes wrapped in bacon, and julienned root vegetables with pistachio butter.  

One example of baby potatoes (serious eats.com)

The ingredient list was shared ahead of time and full recipes after the event.  The chef was very well organized, moved efficiently through the steps, and we could almost taste the results!  This was a different kind of viewing experience and a very successful one!  We haven’t yet bought any ingredients, but we will likely try at least one recipe.

The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)

Young Beth (Netflix.com)

The Queen’s Gambit, the name for an opening chess move, is a suspenseful seven-part series, even if you don’t play chess or understand the intricacies of the game.  It’s the 1950’s and when Beth Harmon’s mother dies in a car crash, the eight-year-old is sent to a very strict orphanage.  Lonely and feeling out of place, she lingers in the basement where the custodian plays chess by himself.  Observing and later learning from him, she demonstrates a real aptitude for the game.  

As a teenager, she is adopted by a childless couple. With the encouragement of her new mother, Beth enters a state chess championship, mostly to earn the prize money. As the 1960’s advance, Beth’s prowess takes her across the country and around the world.  She stands out as female in a very male world  One wonders if and when she will stumble.  

At first, I thought her character was based on a real person, but this is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Walter Tevis published in 1983.  Good entertainment!   

RECENT READING

CHILDHOOD IN POSTWAR BRITAIN

This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear

Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the popular and award-winning Maisie Dobbs mystery series.  She has now put her hand to writing about her childhood growing up poor in rural Kent.  Born in 1955, when asked if she considered herself more a child of the 50’s or the 60’s, she reflected that her childhood was really Edwardian.  Steeped in nature and the countryside, she and her brother John spent summers spent picking hops with their parents.  They also lived for many years without indoor plumbing or a telephone.  It was a spare life based on hard physical labor of all sorts.  

In sprightly prose, Winspear shares her delight in being outdoors in all weathers and her love of stories, stories told by her mother, but also by her many aunts and uncles.  Her parents started married life as vagabonds of a sort. Later, her father established a business as a home contractor while her mother rose in the civil service as a prison administrator.  The memoir is a collection of stories and reminiscences, many grounded in the horrors of WWI, with only a bit about how Winspear became a writer.  More than anything, it is a loving and candid tribute to her parents, both deceased, and to a way of life now gone.  (~JWFarrington)

A NOVEL FOR LIBRARY LOVERS

The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis

Writers of historical fiction often settle on a particular period and then create multiple works set in that era.  Fiona Davis focuses her novels on notable historic buildings in New York.  Earlier works highlighted the Dakota apartment building, the Barbizon hotel for young women, and the art school housed in Grand Central Terminal.  Her newest, The Lions of Fifth Avenue, takes place largely within the New York Public Library’s grand edifice.  In the early years of the 20th century, an interior apartment for the library superintendent was tucked away out of sight.  

Lion sculptures outside the New York Public Library (nypl.org)

In 1913, Jack and Laura Lyons, the superintendent and his wife, live in this apartment with their two children Harry and Pearl.  Jack is responsible for the safety and security of the building including its rare books.  When books go missing, he is a prime suspect.  Fast forward to 1993.   Sadie, a special collections librarian, is organizing an exhibit of rare first editions and other works in the Berg Collection, when several volumes go missing.  How the thefts in 1993 are linked to the events of 1913 make for an intriguing story of family relationships and the world of books.  

Davis has done her research, and it shows in her knowledge of the NYPL and the trade in stolen books.  She also brings in changing sexual mores and the constraints faced by women who desire more than just housewifery and motherhood.  The reader can assume there will be a happy or satisfactory ending, but how the author gets us there keeps us engaged.  (~JWFarrington)

Diversions: Reading & Viewing

JWF 1 Comment

ETA

This is the hurricane season that just doesn’t want to quit. It was a wild week with tropical storm Eta bearing down on Florida’s southwest coast. In our area, we experienced torrential rain (8 inches total) and wind gusts up to 50 miles an hour. At high tide, the surge brought brought water and debris through our mangrove hedges closer to our homes than anyone had ever seen. Some folks had roof leaks, but other than that, we were very fortunate. Thankfully, we were spared hurricane force winds.

GENDER DYNAMICS AND FAMILY LIFE

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
Author Frankel (book page.com)

First a confession, I started this book last year.  It didn’t captivate me, and I did a lot of skimming before setting it aside.  This year it’s a book group selection so I picked it up with more serious intent.  And this time, I became immersed.  Oh, it did take a few chapters to become accustomed to what seems like Frankel’s scatter shot or kitchen sink approach to sentences.  Put in as many words and related phrases as possible and string it out into a fairly long sentence.

I got past that, and I made the effort to learn the four older children and keep them straight.  The bedtime fairy tale that writer/father Penn spins for them featuring Prince Grumwald and Princess Stephanie, plays an important role which I was impatient with previously.  

This is a novel of family life.   Anyone who’s been a parent, particularly a parent of more than one child, will relate to issues of schedules, schoolyard fights, and the general messiness of kids.  More importantly, it’s about a child born Claude who wants to dress like a girl and be called Poppy.  How these parents, ER doctor Rosie and author Penn, and his/her siblings keep Poppy’s big secret, and what the ramifications are, make for a poignant, heartwarming, and ultimately life-affirming novel.  Recommended!

VIEWING: SWEDEN AFTER THE WAR

The Restaurant, or the translated Swedish title, Our Time is Now (Amazon Prime, Season 1; Seasons 2-4, Sundance for $)
Lowander Family with some of the wait staff (netflix.com)

This Swedish series has been compared to Downton Abbey in its popularity in that country.  We too can become immersed in a post-war world seen through the lens of a family-owned restaurant.  It opens in 1945 Stockholm at the Djurgardskalleren, a very formal dining room serving traditional fare.  The Lowander family:  matriarch Helga, sons Gustaf (restaurant manager) and Peter (initially a budding lawyer), and pampered daughter Nina (creator of the DK Club) will soon be celebrating the restaurant’s 50th anniversary.  Business is at a low ebb.  Chef Backe is a fixture.  He both admires and feels threatened by rising chef Calle’s talents.  

But times are changing.  The wait staff, especially Maggan, seek better working conditions through union membership.  Women like Nina feel stifled by dated expectations of a woman’s role.  As the 50’s lead into the 60’s, new music emerges, new cuisine is introduced to restaurant patrons, and society loosens up.

The four seasons unfold through the decades into the 1970’s.  It’s an absorbing story of loves and longing, failed and successful marriages, and sibling rivalries over who has the most power.  All against the backdrop of the social issues of the time.  Highly recommended!

CULTURE THIS WEEK

PIANO RECITAL—Jeremy Denk

Thanks to our friend, Patricia, we’ve discovered the rich offerings from the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.  Their first concert was presented live to a small audience and available online for viewing for 72 hours.  Pianist Jeremy Denk gave an exquisite performance of pieces by Robert and Clara Schumann, Bolts of Loving Thunder by contemporary composer Missy Mazzoli, and Brahms’ Four Piano Pieces.  The Mazzoli piece was commissioned for Emmanuel Ax in 2013 and inspired by some of Brahms’ early work.  

Jeremy Denk (latimes.com)

Thanks to my resident tech whiz, we were able to watch on our big screen!    Unlike some organizations that set a fixed price for each streamed performance, the PCMS takes a pay-what-you-want approach.  This recital was 50 minutes, a perfect length for at-home viewing.

SERENADE FOR STRINGS—Sarasota Orchestra

If you’re local, you’ll be pleased to know that the Sarasota Orchestra has put together its own series of concerts. They are presented live for a small audience in Holley Hall and then later streamed.  Live tickets sell out quickly, but the streaming versions are only $10.    

The orchestra’s first program, featuring thirteen musicians, consists of works by Tchaikovsky and the 18thcentury composer, Joseph Bologne.  We have yet to watch this concert, but our streaming ticket allows five days from the date the link is sent out.

Covid-19 has forced cultural organizations to adapt and be creative in new ways.  I foresee a future where you’ll have multiple subscription options.  Like magazines that you can receive in print or online or both, there may well be these kinds of paid combo packages for concerts, opera and dance.

Note: Header photo is out a window showing tropical storm Eta in action. ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Reading & Viewing: Marriage, Race, & Religion

JWF Leave a comment

MOMENTOUS WEEK

Sunday, November 8, 2020

The 2020 presidential election is one for the history books. For many women, it was an especially momentous one. After the long wait all week, the afternoon was suddenly brighter. Watching Kamala Harris deliver her first speech as Vice President-elect last evening was simply marvelous. Then, after President-elect Joe Biden’s stirring call for unity, the sky was lit with their names midst a smashing array of red, white and blue fireworks. With all of that, putting Harris’ image at the top of this post seemed just right.

RECENT NOVELS—MARRIAGE & RACE

Monogamy by Sue Miller
(lithub.com)

In this novel, bookseller Graham co-owns a store in Cambridge, Mass.  He’s a big man with big appetites.  Appetites for reading and meeting literati, for food, and for women.  He’s a gregarious guy, enveloping and dominating those around him.   This is his second marriage as well as Annie’s.  Annie, a professional photographer and his wife of thirty-odd years, is more reserved and inward looking than he.  Between them, there are two adult children: Lucas, son of his first wife Frieda, and Sarah, his and Annie’s daughter.  Comparing herself to Graham, Annie laments her own lack of feeling, sensing a sort of coldness at her core.  

When Graham dies unexpectedly, Annie is initially devastated.  She and the children separately struggle to fill the gaping hole he has left.  Strangely, Annie and first wife Frieda have been friends for years. They attempt to console each other.  When Annie learns more about Graham’s relationships with other women, her grief at first morphs into anger.  Marriages in this novel are not all monogamous.

I loved this novel and read it slowly to savor the richness of Miller’s prose and her profound grasp of human emotions. Here’s a passage I particularly liked.  Annie has been reflecting on her childhood friendship with Sofie and how they had drifted apart in high school and college.

     But the residue of that friendship lingered for Annie, lingered especially in the newly sharp eye with which she regarded her own family—that gift that often comes in adolescence, when you’re suddenly old enough to be conscious of how another family works, of the possibility of other rules, other ways of living, from those you grew up with.  That gift can open a window, a door, into the world.  Let air in.

    Let you out.

   As this gift was at work in Annie, she slowly came to understand that what she had been feeling in her family for a long time was I don’t belong here.  That had helped to free her, to end her puzzlement about her family and her place in it.  It had opened up her life, though she hadn’t known for years what that would mean for her.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Author Brit Bennett (the guardian.com)

A highly praised new novel, The Vanishing Half is about identity and race and takes place over several decades.  Identical twins, Desiree and Stella, grow up in a small Southern town.  In their late teens, Desiree convinces her sister to leave home with her. They run away to New Orleans.  For a few years, they both work in a laundry, but Stella bolts and Desiree loses contact with her.  Later, Desiree flees an abusive spouse with her little girl and retreats back to Mallard.  The twins are light-skinned, and the reader sees that Stella has chosen to re-make her life as a white woman.  

The book raises questions about how one identifies oneself, and about what is required to present one face to the world while inside living another.  Not only does the book concern itself with racial identity, but for several characters the gender assigned at birth is not the one they feel most at home in—or they relish the fluidity of moving back and forth between genders. 

 I found the first section, set in 1968, a bit slow and it didn’t flow.  Subsequent sections, which I’m now reading, are more engaging.  A thoughtful novel and one relevant for these times. (~JWFarrington)

VIEWING—TENSIONS IN THE MINISTRY

Greenleaf (Netflix)
Grace backed by father, mother, brother and aunt (tvovermind.com)

We happened upon Greenleaf when browsing streaming options and have now watched eight episodes of Season 1.  It’s about a Black mega church in Memphis and the Greenleaf family that runs it.  Bishop James Greenleaf is exuberant, manipulative, and rich.  His wife, son, brother-in-law, and other family members work for the church too. And the entire family lives together in a sumptuous mansion.  

When daughter Grace, also a pastor, and her teenage daughter return, family tensions escalate.  Grace has been gone for years, and her mother is not happy having her back.  Mae sees Grace as a threat and supplanting favored son Jacob.  Grace also puts some credence in the rumors of irregularities in Uncle Mac’s private life.  

Add in adultery, lies, and questions about church finances, and you have the makings of a complex drama with many threads.  Overall, the series is about religion and relationships peppered with lots of Bible-quoting.  At times, I find it uncomfortable to watch, but I am intrigued by Grace’s character. She stands apart from the family as both observer and somewhat reluctant participant.  

Greenleaf is an Oprah Winfrey production and Oprah plays Mavis McCready, Grace’s compassionate, non-judgmental aunt.  In all, there are five seasons.

Note: Header photo of Kamala Harris courtesy of APnews.com