Summer 2014 / Television Viewing

Over the last few years my television viewing had nosedived to about zero minutes per week.  I exaggerate only slightly.  There was practically nothing on television worth viewing, it seemed.  Sometimes I watched "Big Bang Theory" with my husband or the odd home improvement show, none of which particularly interested me.  All the various shoot-them-dead shows have never been to my taste, nor the CSI lab investigations.  It was after about year 2000, maybe, that as our television screens good bigger and bigger, the shows also got bloodier, and you could not turn on show without being assaulted by grisly murder and misdemeanors in your very own living room within about a minute or two.  I don't understand people who watch all this violence voluntarily.

We did see a few seasons of "Breaking Bad", of "The Wire", of what's-it-called biker gang in California, "Hell on Wheels", filmed in our own province, and so on, but honestly, after understanding the setting and the main characters and ideas, it just simply was all too horrible for me.  So, I turned to the internet, to CBC radio, to blogging and other bloggers.

Step in the BBC and Netflix.  It has occurred to me that practically all the shows I have enjoyed lately, were BBC productions found on Netflix pretty much exlusively.  And miracle upon miracle:  there are shows my husband and I both love and look forward to seeing TOGETHER!

There are documentaries on Afghanistan, on art and Shakespeare's plays, on Wagner's theatre in Bayreuth (my home turf). There is the newscasting, which could be more in depth and more varied, but the filming on scene is unsurpassed.  And then there are the Series, that you can binge on if you feel like it and watch absolutely no advertising while at it.  My husband has watched all of "Call the Midwife" with me, and now we are working through "Downton Abbey."

We are both drawn to the drama which tries to be either true to a biography or is a historical period piece.  In the shows I mentioned you can learn about the intricacies of the human heart, the problems among the rich or the poor, and how they resolve them realistically.  They give my husband and me something to talk about and let mellow in the brain fruitfully.  It really is a blessing bigger than could be imagined.   TV watching has become fun again, and we have to thank the Brits for it.  Sometimes I am glad that I swore allegiance to the Queen and her descendants, even though it is a strange thing for an immigrant to Canada to submit to.  Then there are also our favorite writers: Chesterton and Tolkien and Lewis, and so many others, that one can be really grateful to have acquired the English language.

Call me an Anglophile.   Only, they should have become proper Lutherans, confessing the Book of Concord.  It is not too late.