10 SHOWS TO WATCH WHILE NERO FIDDLES
by armen pandola
Have you finished complaining and worrying and stressing out? There is a bright spot - just a short while ago, Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general were complaining that no one is going out to the movies any longer because there is so much great entertainment at home - from streaming TV to online shows to YouTube where you can spend a month surfing from one great video to another.
So, here are 10 shows worth watching - in no special order.
APPLE TREE YARD - Do you like Emily Watson? Apple tree Yard is all-Emily Watson. This is a family drama, but unlike most, there's a lot of action and suspense. Watson plays a middle-aged scientist married with a couple of adult children who, suddenly, starts an affair with a man she just met played with cool menace by Ben Chaplin. Written by Amanda Coe based on a novel by Louise Doughty and directed by Jessica Hobbs, APY is about how those lies we tell not only morph into a tangled web, but end up becoming a shroud.
4 60min Episodes - HULU
A FRENCH VILLAGE - What happens when the Nazis take over a French village in 1940? Nothing good. But this series over five seasons and 60 episodes brings to life what happens when ordinary people have to make terrible, life and death decisions. Yes, it is melodramatic but then occupation under the Nazis was super dramatic with Jews and other 'undesirables' massacred and speaking your mind was deadlier than the coronavirus.
5 Seasons of 12 episodes each - HULU
SPIRAL - Another great French TV series about the criminal justice system. This series looks at the justice system from all angles - in that way, it is similar to The Wire. A French Village and Spiral have something in common - the great French actress Audrey Fleurot.
8 seasons of 10-12 episodes each - HULU
ROME - How is it possible that another show about Rome could be the best limited series ever made? Yes, all the usual characters are there: Julius Caesar ( Ciarán Hinds), Marc Antony (James Purefoy), Cicero (David Bamber), Brutus (Tobias Menzies) and Augustus (Simon Woods). The story is told through the eyes of two legionnaires, Lucius Vorenes (Kevin McKidd) and Titus Pulio (Ray Stevenson), but the real powers in Rome were its women - they are the ones, in this artfully told tale, who control the men. I can guarantee that you will love this series.
2 Seasons of 11 episodes each AMAZON PRIME
THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE - What would have happened if Germany and Japan had won the war? The US is divided between them with the Rockies creating a neutral zone. This series has a slow start, but picks up when the story gets to John Smith (Rufus Sewell) an American who joined the Nazis when they took over and has risen to the very top.
4 Seasons of 10 episodes each AMAZON PRIME
11/22/63 - From Stephen King's novel, J.J. Abrams has constructed a thriller limited series even though we know how it all ends. Jack Epping (James Franco) is sent back in time to stop the assisination of President Kennedy. With that premise, the series takes a look at the American Dream and what happened to it over the past 50 years.
MESSIAH - Is a new messiah going to come to earth to save us? When a man (Mehdi Dehbi in the Middle East begins to disrupt the local scene and threatens to go global with his message, the CIA sends an operative (Michelle Monaghan) to figure out what's going on. Watch and you decide.
1 season of 10 episodes NETFLIX
THE LOUDEST VOICE - Did it take a movement to force us to take a hard look at Fox News? Did anyone with eyes have any doubt about what Fox was selling? The formula was simple - buy sports and its predominantly white male audience, add super-right wing 'news' to feed that demographic's well-documented prejudices and add that other ingredient that neither sports nor news gave that demogrpahic - sex. And so we have Roger Ailes (Russell Crowe). Seeing this TV series and the movie Bombshell will prompt you to take a shower - the slime is an inch thick.
7 part mini-series SHOWTIME
THE CIVIL WAR - Ken Burns' epic documentary about The Civil War is a great series to watch for the whole family. This is a 9-part look at the defining event in American history - yet, many people have little or no idea about why it happened and how it came to be one of the most devastating civil wars ever fought - 620,000 deaths, just short of the total number of Americans who died in all the other wars it fought, combined. Every family in America was affected - and while the large battles like Gettysburg and Vicksburg are well-known, the Civil War was fought in a thousand different places with battles occurring almost daily. You can find The Civil War on your local library's emedia site and watch it for free if you have a library card.
THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY - Disguised as a series about The Beatles, Anthology is really about rock 'n roll and blues in the second half of the 20th century. The Beatles were influenced by it all - and they can be credited with starting almost all rock, blues and popular music innovations that followed them. How was music made in the 1950s and 60s and how The Beatles changed it all. Another one that the whole family could watch - and you can stream it for free at:
https://archive.org/details/BeatlesAnthology/Episode+1.m4v.