Thank heaven the local PBS stations are done with their pledge drives! Almost three weeks long this year- one can only watch just so much "Celtic Woman" and "50's Doo-Wop"!
Currently watching the new season of "Call the Midwife", "World on Fire" (Masterpiece), and "Baptiste" (Mystery). All very good, with more good stuff coming later.
Our cable Acorn channel just got some new programs (well, new to us!) this week. Currently enjoying all four seasons of "Lovejoy", an old favorite, as well as "Wire in the Blood" with Robson Green, and a hilarious bit of Steampunkish nonsense called "Going Postal".
Hope all of our group's brothers and sisters are safe and well. Remember, you are not alone! You're all part of our online family and if things aren't going very well, please post something and let us know. We DO care!
Cheers to all, Bowers
So, you are in The US, then?
I'm stuck in L.A. because of the pandemic, and my fear of catching the virus, by being packed in with many people in closed quarters in public places (such as airport waiting rooms and packed airplanes for 10+ hour trips), as I am well into my 70s. Speaking of US PBS-TV, despite not being much of a TV watcher these past 20 years, I'm currently watching a very interesting Belgian police/crime series, called "Professor 'T' ", (which may have a different title in different countries. It is about a high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome Autist criminal psychology professor with a super-Human memory (like that of Sherlock Holmes), who acts as a consultant to Antwerp's Police Department on especially difficult cases. It was aired for 3 seasons of 13 shows, each, and shown in Belgium in 2015, 2016, and 2018, and in The Netherlands in 2017, 2018, and 2019. The main character, Jasper Teerlinck, is ridiculously knowledgeable about why people in general, and especially the criminal minds act the way they do in any situation. He is extremely clever, but also extremely arrogant, and so, is very frustrating for his colleagues at The University of Antwerp and that City's police department to work with. The cases are very complicated, but interesting; and the interplay between the professor and his colleagues is very funny. The dialog is in Flemish (but it is not heavy Antwerp dialect). The British "Channel 4" broadcasts have English subtitles. It is very clearly spoken, and as close as Flemish can be to Standard Dutch - so quite understandable for Dutch speakers.
The lead character is so very exasperating, because he seems to know every detail about every aspect of criminal psychology, seemingly holding hundreds of thousands of data points of knowledge (holding an unlimited number of facts in his memory). He allows the police to first test their theories on cases, and then, when they are stumped, and don't know which direction to proceed, he steps in to "save" them, and solve the case, usually in an amazing, totally unexpected way, not unlike Sherlock Holmes.
I've been a big fan of the original "Sherlock Holmes" stories by Arthur Conan Doyle since reading them as a pre-teen in the 1950s, as well as comic book portrayals of those stories from the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the films of his stories and new stories made in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and of the related British TV series in the 1950s. I also love the 1940s cartoony comic book comedy parodies in US comic books.
This TV series has both the great suspense of the serious adaptations, as well as the tongue-in-cheek injection of humour watching this eccentric, egotistical, "rain-man" who we all know from dealing with Aspergian, cumpulsive comic book collectors, who seem to know every possible bit of information about every comic book that was ever printed.
