. . . Ted Lasso is about an American amateur football coach — played by Jason Sudeikis, formerly of Saturday Night Live — who goes to the UK to manage a struggling professional soccer team. I had seen ads for the show when it debuted last summer but didn’t bother with it because neither Jennifer nor I are into sports. That was a mistake. . . .
Category: Television
Streaming Services à la Carte
There are so many streaming services these days, and they all want you to ante up something every month to access their programming. Many of them have a couple of compelling shows but not nearly enough good content to justify paying month after month. When I learn that a streaming service has a show I want to see, I’ll often subscribe for one month (or sign up for the free trial if there is one), watch the one show and whatever else seems interesting, and then cancel the service before the month is up. In theory I could watch the best offerings of twelve different streaming services over the course of a year for the cost of just one. . . .
The Queen’s Gambit
Jennifer and I are two episodes into a seven-episode miniseries on Netflix called The Queen’s Gambit. We are loving it. It’s about a young girl, Beth Harmon, who is sent to an orphanage after her mother dies and there discovers a love and extraordinary aptitude for chess. . . . Though we’ve still got five episodes left to watch, I’ve seen enough to recommend the series unreservedly. It is riveting. . . .
Watching Less TV
Here’s an unexpected development: I’ve more or less stopped watching television. . . .
And I suspect it’s not just because I have other things to do; I have a hunch it’s also, ironically, because there’s so much TV to watch. . . .
Reality TV’s Socialization of American Youth
Years ago I tuned in to one of those reality TV shows that feature teams of contestants and some kind of elimination competition. What struck me was that the conniving, cutthroat, contemptible (and contemptuous) behavior of the contestants was not how normal, sane people behave. Then I realized that the producers of these programs contrive the game so that contestant have to act that way to win. . . .
CBS Sunday Morning
It’s another Sunday, so there’s another episode of CBS Sunday Morning on my DVR. As I’ve noted, I have cut back on my consumption of news. I’ve decided that mainlining alarmist coverage of aberrant events just isn’t good for my mental health or my perspective on reality. CBS Sunday Morning is one of the few news shows that I still make a point of watching. It doesn’t focus on the outrages and catastrophes of the last 24 hours as most news programming does, or the bizarre and menacing topics that are fodder for many news magazine shows. . . .
The Fall TV Season?
Each year at this time I leaf through whichever issue of Entertainment Weekly has a preview of the fall TV season and look for new shows that Jennifer and I might like, as well as the return dates for the shows we already watch. As with so much else, this year is like no other. There is, for all intents and purposes, no fall TV season. . . .
Streaming Services
We’ve all read about the “cable cutters” who have dropped their expensive cable TV subscriptions in favor of an ala carte collection of streaming services that gives them access to the programs they want without paying for stuff they don’t.
Jennifer and I find ourselves in the more expensive category of having signed up for various streaming services while retaining our cable subscription. . . .
Jane the Virgin
Jennifer and I were late to the party with Jane the Virgin, which aired from 2014 to 2019. We just started watching it on Netflix and are four episodes in. The series won a raft of awards, but we never got around to checking it out until our friend Lee put us onto it a couple of weeks ago…
Mining the Gold on Disney+
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I subscribed to the new Disney+ streaming service so Jennifer and I could watch the filmed version of the Broadway musical Hamilton. Then, with 29 days of our one-month subscription left to go, we started watching The Mandalorian, a Star Wars-based TV series. We’re three episodes into it…