What We’re Watching

​In the old days—hey, I’m almost 86; I can talk about old days—we would watch weekly sitcoms on trusty ABC, CBS, or NBC. Things like I Love Lucy, Mork and Mindy, and the Golden Girls were what we and most of our neighbors watched. Of course, we also took in such seasonal perennials as pro-football, pro-basketball, and pro-baseball. We had our individual favorites, both teams and stars: Go Bears! Yay, Willie! Then there was Sunday evening with Ed Sullivan, whom my Orthodox Jewish grandmother always referred to as “Mr. Soloman.” Why, my late wife and I were even “there” for the historic appearance of the Beatles on his show. 

All this was way before PBS with its British masterpieces, not to mention streaming services like Netflix, Apple Prime, and Hulu, among others. So, back in the day, if you missed out on an episode, tough! Of course, if you were sufficiently patient, often a wait of years, you might catch that missed show in re-runs. But by then you’d long forgotten and no longer cared whether Ricky Ricardo had gotten that new job or if Mork was ever able to visit his home planet, Orc.
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So much for prologue. The question is what are we watching now or have watched and liked recently. Let’s start with the present. We have just finished Season 1 of The Law According to Lidia Poet, an Italian-language program that takes place in late-19th-century Turin, Italy. As far as I can tell, Signorina Lydia, the main character, seems way too modern for her time, roughly the Italian equivalent of late-Victorian England. Her predicament, however, is very much of her time period. As someone who has completed legal studies, she is none the less kept as a woman from practising law, including defending clients in court. So she becomes the investigative assistant to her brother, an accredited trial lawyer. My wife and I love her feistiness as she pushes against social conventions and is the main factor in helping her clients get found innocent. Cedar and I refer to her as the Italian equivalent of Miss Scarlet, Lidia’s contemporary English female TV detective who deals with the same sort of social constriction and who is also able against all odds to solve her clients’ predicaments. To be sure, Cedar and I have varying interests in the current series: she for Lidia’s outrageously gorgeous outfits and me to improve my comprehension of oral Italian. Oh, and one main difference between the perky but chaste Miss Scarlet and Lidia Poet is the amount of sex the latter is shown as having. The Italy of King Umberto was clearly a different place from late-Victorian England.

Other shows we like include that perennial, Call the Midwife, as well as Queer Eye, Virgin River, Grantchester, All Creatures Great and Small, and—some years ago—everyone’s favorite, Downton Abbey. We become attached to the characters and are helpfully distracted from the issues of our day by seeing how they cope with the challenges of theirs.
I am sharing all this information in gratitude for the many good TV tips we receive from friends, family, and neighbors. Despite everything, community lives!

Matilda De Angelis as Lidia Poet in one of her fabulous outfits.