Recent Watching

My daughter and I are feeling a little bereft this Sunday - there are no more episodes of All Creatures Great and Small to look forward to.  The series has warmed our hearts for the past four years, and every time a new season has been released, we look forward to watching it on Sunday evenings. It's a lovely end to the weekend/beginning of a new week, and an unqualified positive family viewing experience. I can't think of a single episode where I've felt I had to filter anything.  A few episodes have caused tears when an animal has died or when something sad has happened related to the war, but primarily we are lifted up by the warmth of the family connections, the wholesomeness of caring for animals, and the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales. It's been a bonding experience for my daughter and me, even though her siblings don't all watch along with us and are annoyed when they call for their Sunday check in, and we are occupied watching the show. 

****Spoiler alert!  ********

  

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10590066/mediaviewer/rm763092738/

The last episode of season 5 had the feel of a finale.  There are a few loose ends, but although we've been rooting for Tristan and Maggie and Mrs. Hall and Siegfried to acknowledge they have feelings for each other, it's really more appropriate for the season to have ended the way it did.  Love doesn't always end in marriage, and fondness might be a better word for the affection between Mrs. Hall and Siegfried.  They need each other because they don't have someone else, and after years of sharing a home, it's no wonder they care deeply for each other. But I admire the show's writers for showing restraint.  While the show may be dismissed as sentimental, at least it doesn't descend into excess romantic fodder with an unlikely and inappropriate love affair.  I could be wrong and there might be another season in which the vet and the housekeeper actually are able to transcend their class and educational differences, but I'm all for a bittersweet restraint.  

The drama between Tristan and Maggie is a little different. I have a hard time believing in the unlikely Tristan - Charlotte Beauvoir love affair.  Charlotte is from a much more privileged background, and although in a moment of youthful rebellion and idealism, she ran off from home to be a part of the war effort, she may mature into an appreciation for her station.  And while Tristan has matured because of his experiences, he also is wounded emotionally by them and by survivor's guilt.  For now Charlotte seems remarkably understanding, and remarkably well-adjusted to simple pleasures like dining at Skedale House for the holidays.  Does she love Tristan enough to settle in there or will Tristan be able to class up to her father's house?  Or will he return to his love for Maggie?  Maggie didn't choose Tristan the first time she married, and even though Arthur has apparently died (or is he just MIA assumed dead?), she probably isn't in a hurry to remarry (although widows with small children might be excused from mourning for a long time). These are the slight dramas that keep viewers returning week after week - beyond just the simple joy of imaginatively stepping into life in the countryside of Northern England for a minute.  Someday I'd like to visit. Maybe mother-daughter trip is in our future.  Or at least a read along from the books to keep the story alive ...

*****

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5622316/mediaviewer/rm388236289/

Our other viewing this Lent has been The Chosen. We started the series in Advent, and just finished the first 3 seasons.  It's short enough to watch an episode on a Wednesday or Thursday, although I don't prefer weeknight TV.  After a slow start, we've been drawn into the series, but I have a few reservations about it.  I have mixed emotions about my daughter watching it before the Bible stories are deep in her psyche because I'd prefer her to have her own imaginative image of Jesus and his disciples and to be able to tell when the creators of the show are filling in gaps in the story and when they are drawing straight from Scripture.  Sometimes it's easy to tell because the characters break into contemporary idioms and talk like they are well-versed in contemporary communication skills - for instance, the disciples and the women have moments when they talk about feelings that make me feel like I'm seeing an enactment of some therapists recommendation for how to have difficult conversations with those you love, like when Tamar and Mary Magdalene share about their past.  The character of Peter is played in a much different way than I imagine him, and some of the scenes between him and his wife Eden are a bit cringy.  I like the character Zebedee, father of James and John, and I like the way Elizabeth and Zachariah were portrayed in the first episode of season 4, which we just watched.  This episode is about the death of John the Baptist and was probably one of my least favorite.  John the Baptist is portrayed as something of a looney, and his hair and beard look too much like a wig.  Salome's dance is weird and erotic, and while it probably was erotic, was it as weird as this one? The actress who plays Salome is super muscly and not particularly demur.  It's an odd scene. And then the death of John the Baptist is almost laughable. He is brought into the executioner's room and just calmly strokes the chopping block. He engages in conversation with the Roman executioner who is polishing the silver platter for his head about wedding feasts, and the exchange ends with John saying "You wouldn't get it" to the executioner about the image of a wedding feast.  These are John's "last words" that the Roman documenting the execution writes down.  Odd choice of words to give to John. 

The show also presents some events out of sequence.  The death of John the Baptist in the Gospel of Matthew occurs before the feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on the water, but the show reverses these events.  It leaves out the disciples burying the body of John the Baptist, and it has someone else telling Jesus, not the disciples. Why would the writers reverse these episodes from both Matthew's and Mark's gospels? And why give John such a ridiculous thing to say for his last words? 

I can overlook the addition of imagined events in the lives of the disciples and the contemporary conversations, as well as the sometimes awkward scenes that perhaps weren't rehearsed as much as they could have been, but I am bothered by the reworking of the Gospels to fit some story line that really doesn't need to be reordered for the purposes of the show, to my mind. I assume the writers consult with historians and theologians as they create the timeline and story arc for this dramatization, but this shift seems unnecessary.  At the very least, it does provide opportunity for conversation about the events of the Bible, and sometimes sends us to Scripture to fact check, which I'm sure is one of the goals of the creators, who film most episodes in Midlothian, Texas, as a stand-in for Israel. While we were living in Texas, I never wondered if the landscape were similar to the Middle East, in the way I did in California with its olive groves and other Mediterranean climate similarities, but perhaps I should have!