ICYMI: The Best Film & TV from 2023 You Should Watch in 2024
This is the whole Megillah, folks: A ginormous tribute to my favourites from the big and small screens — gems you might have missed during the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes and should find in this new year.
Beloved Readers,
You might want to hydrate and do some gentle stretching before you dig into this reeeeeeeaaaaaallllllyyyyyyy long dispatch. It was meant to be three posts sent over a fortnight, but then I got laid out by a common cold (remember those?) and suddenly it was the second weekend in January and … well, I decided to give it to you all at once.
You don’t need to read it in one sitting and I kinda hope you don’t as the point of it is to encourage you to pause and go watch some good stuff you might have missed in 2023 during the many months-long strikes by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA (which I fully supported, btw; in fact my pal Melinda and I baked cookies and brought them to the strike lines in LA last summer.) While the strikes were on, new film and television projects couldn’t be promoted in the usually ways as guild and union members were prohibited from doing any press or even posting about their new work on social media. As a result, a lot of things fell through the cracks, and some of what did were jewels that deserve to be recovered.
In what follows, if you see the title of a film or TV show hot-linked in bold and click through, it most likely will take you to a Google page with available viewing/streaming options or to the only platform where it’s streaming. Links embedded in the text themselves usually take you to something I (or someone else) has written about the film/show/series previously or to a video.
I have attempted to restrain myself and not write full-bore essays about every film/show/series mentioned herein. It’s difficult, but if the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that I can do hard things. Also, I hear brevity can be a kindness.
That said, I’m giving a little more space to introduce some of my favourites in each category: feature film, documentary, docuseries, TV series, short films, and stuff from years past that’s worth revisiting today. The rest I will list with shorter descriptions, trusting that you already trust my judgment enough to give some of them a go without too much preamble.
I hope this uber-post will be a resource that you’ll bookmark and return to in the months and years to come when you’re trying to figure out what to watch, particularly during these long winter nights here in the northern hemisphere and languid summer nights down under (Hi, Jarrod; your face is a long winter’s night.)
If you like it, please feel free to share it with others by re-Stacking it, pointing to it in your newsletter, on your socials, in the Morse code haiku you send into the world at night before bed, etc.
Enjoy!
The 2023 Feature Films I Loved Most
While I didn’t see every film in 2023, I saw a lot of them, and I can say, without equivocation, that my favourite feature film of the year was Frybread Face and Me.
Do you know it? (Bonus points if you do.)
This subtle, elegant, unfussy independent film tells the story of a tween Navajo boy — Benny (Keir Tallman in an impressive cinematic debut) — from San Diego who’s sent by his parents to spend the summer with his grandmother on a Diné reservation in Arizona. I love a good Bildungsroman and the film has that sensibility about it, but rather than “coming of age” Frybread Face is more a “coming of personhood,” with all the consciousness, connection, growing pains, and grounding that it entails.
The film is the feature debut from writer/director Billy Luther (a member of the Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo tribes), who also serves as narrator in a fashion reminiscent of Daniel Stern in the original Wonder Years TV series.
The entire Frybread cast is Native American. This endeavor transcends mere representation. It is Native Americans telling their story in their words, literally — a significant part of the dialogue in the film, and everything the Grandma Lorraine character (played by Sarah H. Natani) says, is spoken in the Navajo language with English subtitles — in their way, with their perspective and rhythms. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe how powerful that is for the audience and, I’d imagine, for the folks that made the film, too.
Frybread Face and Me is an intimate, at times comedic portrait of two adolescent cousins — Tallman and the exceptionally talented teenage actress Charley Hogan (playing the eponymous Frybread Face) — who have been abandoned in different ways, physical and emotional, by their parents and who discover a bond and shared identity against a backdrop of vast desert, it’s clarifying light, and not much else.
The film contains multitudes and its characters and the stories they embody will linger in your imagination long after the credits roll. But I don’t want to say much more about the plot. It’s too precious to spoil.
Taika Waititi, the Māori native New Zealander and multi-hyphenate (actor, writer, director, producer, cheeky smartypants, fashion icon, pirate) who has become one of my favourite creative humans over the last several years — I’ll admit I’m besotted; one of my friends refers to TW as “your boyfriend Taika” — executive produced Frybread Face and Me. He also executive produced Reservation Dogs, one of the best TV series of last year, the last several years, and perhaps even of all time. More on that in the TV section below.
It was in a recent Instagram post by “my boyfriend” that I discovered the extraordinary short film Ninety-Five Senses discussed a little later in this post. I’ve come follow Waititi’s endeavors and posts like so many spiritual breadcrumbs, in much the same way I do with Patti Smith. They invariably lead me to something I need to hear/see/understand/know/experience that makes my soul feel more expansive and the world a little less terrible.
Ngā mihi nui, TW.
Asteroid City and a Quartet of Wes Anderson Short Films
“Stop helping us. We’re in grief.”
— Augie Steenbeck, Asteroid City
It will surprise no one who’s been reading me for any length of time to hear that among my favourite films of 2023 are works by the poetry-haired EpiscoTexan-turned-Parisian-flâneur, wide-whale-corduroy enthusiast, and devotée of detail: auteur Wes Anderson.
I was a fan of his 2023 feature-length Asteroid City when I first saw it last summer, and subsequent viewings only have deepened my ardor. (You can revisit my initial thoughts about Asteroid City HERE.)
While I’ve rarely (like, I can count the occasions on the fingers it takes to make a peace sign) seen films inside a theater since COVID became part of our reality, there are a number of 2023 films (Poor Things, All Of Us Strangers, and American Fiction chief among them) that I have yet to see. Still, I imagine even with a slightly fuller picture of the cinematic landscape of 2023, Asteroid City would remain among my top picks.
Only after the WGA and SAG-AFTRA were settled did I (begrudgingly) re-subscribe to Netflix, where the first thing(s) I watched was the quartet of short films Anderson made based on the stories of his beloved Roald Dahl: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Poison, The Swan, and The Rat Catcher.
The collection of four Dahl shorts — the sum of the parts, if you will — is, perhaps, even better than Asteroid City. But the margins of superiority are slimmer than a cat’s whisker. They’re each wonderful, difficult, whimsical, reluctantly joyful, weirdly hopeful, and a delight to watch.
In a similar vein to the Anderson-palooza that was among the artistic highlights of my 2023 came, late in the year, The Holdovers.
In the Venn diagram geography where Wes-heads, lovers of J.D. Salinger (especially his Glass family tales) and the early works of John Irving, appreciators of the aesthetic and themes of 1970s American filmmakers, and those of us who believe Paul Giamatti is one of the greatest living actors of his generation converge, The Holdovers is the cinematic equivalent of sunrise at the Grand Canyon and a late August sunset on the Outer Cape rolled into one.
I loved everything about this film. Giamatti (who was the 1500th guest on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast recently wherein these two similarly-wired humans discussed the film among many other things in a rollicking conversation), is exceptionally good in his turn as the misanthropic classics teacher Paul Hunham at an elite New England boarding school. It’s right up there with his portrayal of Miles in Sideways — both performances in films directed by the great Alexander Payne.
The Holdovers’ ensemble cast is mighty, with standout performances from newcomer Dominic Sessa as Angus and Tony-nominated actress Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who, as grieving mother and fortress of strength Mary Lamb, is unforgettable. (Randolph also makes a brief but important appearance in another stellar film from 2023 — Rustin — where she portrays Mahalia Jackson.)
Like much of my 2023 (as well as the Anderson films and many of the others listed here in various categories), The Holdovers is thematically centered around loss and grief of various kinds and dimensions. The film is most assuredly a dramedy, with moments of hilarity employed judiciously amidst far more serious narrative arcs.
The Holdovers is a treasure. It’s still playing in actual theaters, but is also streaming on various platforms.
Please see it. And then listen to Giamatti’s conversation with Maron. Make a day of it.
Here are several other favourite feature films from 2023 (in alphabetical order):
Anatomy of a Fall
This exceptional film set in the French Alps is a whodunit tour de force that explores an emotional landscape of grief, guilt, love, and shame, while chronicling the forensic excavation of relationship (and a death that is either a murder or a suicide.) Both are painful and fascinating to behold. I haven’t seen anything quite like this in years.
Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret
Judy Blume’s book came out the year I was born and her young adult oeuvre was formative to my adolescent consciousness and that of so many of my peers. The film does the book and Ms. Blume justice. I waited a long time to see it (as is my enigmatic way with popular things), but I’m glad I finally did.
Dream Scenario
Nicolas Cage is on a roll of late. He seems to have gotten over himself and out of his own way, unreservedly embracing his Nic Cage-ness by taking on roles where he’s neither action hero nor romantic lead. He’s at his best as the quirky balding guy with rage issues and trouble navigating social conventions and I’ve never liked him more — or at least not since Moonstruck. The premise of this film is so … odd that I’m reluctant even to attempt description here. Just watch it.
Jules
Sir Ben Kingsley, Jane Curtin, and Harriet Sansom Harris are neighbors in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. A UFO crashes in laconic Milton (Kingsley)’s garden and what ensues is not quite what you might expect from this set up. I thought the film was sanguine and surprising in the best of ways.
Maestro
I don’t know what some people’s problems are with Bradley Cooper. They feel at best misguided and at worst they reek of mean-spirited petty jealousies. Please ignore the smack-talk you’ve heard about Cooper’s paean to Maestro Leonard Bernstein and see this masterful film where Cooper (and no, the prosthetic nose neither distracted nor offended me in the slightest) embodies Bernstein. Even if you, for whatever reason, don’t care for Cooper, see it for the magnificent performance by Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre. My God. Plus, Sarah Silverman as Bernstein’s sister is a treat. I forget sometimes what a wonderful actor she is. (Have you ever seen her as Helen in the Masters of Sex series? Highly recommend.)
Nyad
Historically, I have not been a fan of Annette Bening, but in this biopic about the long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, she’s a triumph, and in the company of co-stars Jodi Foster and Rhys Ifans, her performance feels integrated, real, and deeply true. I wasn’t expecting to be affected by this film, but I was and that is in no small part thanks to Bening’s holistic portrayal of Nyad, a difficult woman with a determination that is as admirable as she is irascible.
Oppenheimer
Cillian Murphy: just hand him the Oscar, please, and one for Robert Downey, Jr., too, while you’re at it. A cast of thousands — Emily Blunt is a marvel as Oppenheimer’s spouse, Kitty. This film is epic in every sense of the word, and to my mind deserving of all the accolades it’s been receiving. I’m not a bandwagon-jumper normally, but this film has me leaping.
Rustin
I knew little about Bayard Rustin or this film before I watched it last week, only that the film was produced by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. That was enough for me to give it a whirl and I’m so glad I did. Rustin (portrayed with virtuosity by Coleman Domingo — he seems to have inhabited Rustin in a similar vein to Cooper’s Bernstein.) Rustin was an openly-gay Black man integral to the Civil Rights movement from its inception. Nevertheless, he was repeatedly dismissed and marginalized for who he was, but he kept doing the work anyway, including organizing the March on Washington in 1963 where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we honor and strive to emulate on this MLK Day (and every day), delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Dr. King had the dream. Mr. Rustin gave him the literal platform from which to deliver it. This is, for me, a must-watch.
P.S. Yes, I saw Killers of the Flower Moon. No, despite my longtime interest in Native American history and culture, my general fondness for Scorsese (his Kundun is one of my top five favourite films of all time), and a few truly stellar performances (Lily Gladstone is particularly luminous), I did not care for it. Marty, God bless him, needs an editor (don’t we all?) and I wish the story hadn’t centered the white characters’ experience/perspective as much and as often as it did. Still, kudos to all involved for the effort to tell the story of a truly horrifying, shameful chapter in the history of this troubled nation. When my husband, son and I were watching it after Christmas, we had to stop the film so I could Google the Osage murders in Oklahoma in the 1920s, indignant that none of us (Boomer, Gen Xer, or Gen Z) had learned this part of our history in school. Points for that. And shame on us for ignoring the difficult parts of our history as if that might make them disappear.
I also watched Barbie, or, rather, I tried to watch it several times, but kept falling asleep. I wanted to love it, I really did, and I expected to as I adore director Greta Gerwig. She’s a genius. And I understand that I was supposed to love it. But it just didn’t grab me the way it has countless others, although that scene when Margot Robbie first meets Rhea Perlman….that’s a soul-changing moment. (Right up there with the Alanis Morissette’s scene at the end of Kevin Smith’s Dogma.)
Feature-Length Documentary Films
There is a moment in the documentary American Symphony where musician and composer Jon Batiste is performing in a concert hall somewhere while his wife, the writer, artist, musician, and polymath Suleika Jaouad is at home in New York City, in the midst of the ongoing COVID pandemic, battling a recurrence of the cancer she’d beaten years earlier.
Batiste pauses, his elegant fingers hovering over the piano keys, eyes closed tightly, head inclined forward, lips moving almost indiscernably … for 95 seconds. He’s praying for Jaouad and waiting for the Spirit to give him the notes to play in musical intercession for the woman he loves so deeply.
It is one of a number of arresting moments in this superb film, which follows a year in the life of Batiste and Jaouad as he composes his first symphony — one born from imagining what classical orchestras and symphonies would look like if created with the influences, contextual comprehension, and technology of today — which he ultimately performs it at Carnegie Hall, while she battles the return of a rare form of leukemia she’d beaten a decade earlier. It was the worst of times and the best of times, an annus horribilis she later describes in her Substack as “my year of love.”
Batiste, who is to my ear one of the greatest musicians and songwriters of our time, said making the film (also executive produced by the Obamas) was the most “vulnerable, honest thing that I’ve ever done.” I believe him and it shows.
American Symphony is a vivid, sometimes painfully real love story; a creative and spiritual hero’s quest wherein Batiste wrestles anxiety with refreshing transparency (we listen as he has phone sessions with this therapist, once while lying face down on his bed with a pillow over his head), the pain of watching his beloved suffer and being separated from her. He was still band leader for Stephen Colbert during much of the making of the film and performing live in concert out of town on occasion while she was in seclusion for weeks in the hospital after a bone marrow transplant. He manages to keep the wrenching fear of losing her at bay most of the time, for her sake, it seems, moreso than his.
Jaouad is a remarkable figure throughout the film and her ordeal. She is able to channel a seemingly supernatural positivity even in the worst moments, and find joy wherever it can be found. For instance, when the cancer treatment makes her vision blurry so she can no longer write or read, she starts painting watercolor animals paper propped on a tray across her hospital bed and her creations are fantastical (I wondered aloud whether there was anything she couldn’t do with virtuosity).
American Symphony is simply gorgeous and profoundly inspiring — spiritually, artistically, relationally. And it is definitely among my top favourite films of 2023.
Here are several other favourite documentaries from 2023 (in alphabetical order):
Holy Frit
One of the things good documentaries do well is make the intricacies of obscure topics accessible and understandable to those of us unacquainted with them. Truly great documentaries do that and also tell a human story that is at once specific in its details and universal in its application. Such is the case with Holy Frit, which tells the story of how the largest stained glass window in history — commissioned by and installed in the Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City — was created by artists based in a Los Angeles studio from design to installation, a process that took two years of nearly round-the-clock work to complete. I watched the doc last fall via a private screening link when the film first opened in limited theatrical release and have been thinking about it ever since. The film explains how stained glass has been made historically and how it’s made today, including the method employed by Narcissus Quagliata (he’s sort of the Jackson Pollock of modern stained glass) where he free-hand sprinkles “frit” — finely ground colored glass — across intricately assembled and layered panes of colored glass, giving a painterly, almost watercolored effect. There are clashes of personality and method among the creators of the grandest of windows, stories of self-doubt and encouragement, reinvention and overcoming adversity that comprise an emotional stained glass, if you will, through which the audience sees the bigger picture, literally and figuratively. Unfortunately, the film still doesn’t have a streaming deal, but you can find find a list of screenings at theaters HERE and when it is available to stream, I will update this post with new links. In the meantime, check out the trailer below.
Joan Baez: I Am A Noise
(TW: sexual abuse)
Wow, Joan Baez is unafraid to go there in this powerful documentary about her life as an artist and activist. Yes, she is an icon, but you quickly forget that as the film unfolds and relate to her as a woman who overcame much more than most of us knew to be the force for peace and justice that she has been for more than 60 years.
Peter O'Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba
Personal foible: I adore O’Toole and have since I was a kid. One of the most memorable movie-going experiences happened one Saturday afternoon in Chicago 25 years or so ago when my husband and I went to see a matinee of Lawrence of Arabia at the Music Box Theater, complete with a live organ player and a proper intermission. I’ve watched that film more times than I can recall since then and he ever looms large in my creative imagination. This film explores the making of that film and of O’Toole’s cinematic legacy. Those eyes.
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
I didn’t want to watch this film. I didn’t know if I could handle it emotionally. But I’m so glad I did. There’s enough moxie and inspiration from the example of the absolutely fantastic Mr. Fox to keep going and do the hard things that we each must do in our lives, dammit, especially when you don’t think you can and don’t want to, to keep all of us going for at least the next few decades. Fox is remarkable. Full stop.
The Ghost of Richard Harris
This is technically a 2022 film, but I discovered it last year after watching the Peter O’Toole documentary (it was listed as a suggested film at the bottom of the Prime page.) My first memory of Harris is seeing him perform in (I think) Camelot in New Haven when I was in high school, long before his turn as Professor Dumbledore, et al. This documentary features his three sons —BAFTA Award-winning actor Jared Harris (Mad Men, The Crown, Chernobyl, Professor Moriarty in Guy Ritchie’s 2011 Sherlock Holmes), actor Jamie Harris, and director Damian Harris — reflecting on their relationship with their father and his legacy whilst going through some of his warehoused possessions nearly 20 years after his death.
Television Series (Scripted)
Reservation Dogs
Sterlin Harjo’s three seasons of Reservation Dogs are a masterpiece, a cinematic thin place where the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds is practically transparent.
Rarely have I been more affected by a television series — Northern Exposure (see below) and Pamela Adlon’s Better Things are the other two I’d place beside it in my holy television trinity — than Reservation Dogs, co-created by Harjo and my boyfriend, Taika. Set on a Native American reservation in Oklahoma, the show follows a core group of four teenage friends as they wrestle with grief after the death of the fifth member of their “dogs” (a la Tarantino). It shares the “coming of age” theme of its big-screen cousin Frybread Face and Me, but is more of a traditional Bildungsroman than the film because the main protagonists are older teens on the verge of becoming young adults.
It is the first series in American television history to feature an almost entirely Native American/First Nations cast and crew, including its writing staff, and showrunner Harjo, an Oklahoma native who is a citizen of the Seminole nation and also has Muscogee lineage.
As a white person watching this series, I felt it my responsibility to shut up and listen, which is why I haven’t written about it before now. The stories Reservation Dogs told were not mine and I was not its target audience, but Harjo generously invited me and a huge, diverse audience of other non-Native people to hear, experience, and learn from them. And I did. So much.
The beauty and wisdom communicated through the adventures of Elora (Devery Jacobs), Bear (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Cheese (Lane Factor), and Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis), and the community/ensemble cast that surrounded them (including such luminaries as Graham Greene, Lily Gladstone, Zahn McClarnon, my beloved Marc Maron as the residential director of a juvenile detention half-way house, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, who plays a small, recurring part as the owner of a convenience store on the rez, are an embarrassment of riches and eternal blessings. I learned so much through the series — about Native American culture and spirituality, yes, but also about myself. I saw my imperfectly perfect family reflected in their families; I saw teenage me in each member of the quartet of young leading actors, but also in the middle-aged parents, and in the elders, who are cherished in many indigenous cultures in a way they sadly are not in the American mainstream.
I can’t say enough about the splendor of this series, which ended last September by Harjo’s design (he only ever intended for it to have a three-season arc) even though audiences would have been happy for it to go on for many more. It is the best of what storytelling on television can be. It made historic strides for artistic representation of Native Americans by Native Americans. And it will, I am confident, stand the test of time and be relevant for generations to come of all kinds of Americans.
If you haven’t spent time with Reservation Dogs yet, please do. Sit back, shut up, and listen. This is the way and a path to wisdom.
Here are several other favourite TV series from 2023 (in alphabetical order):
Brassic
This British comedy-drama jewel has been one of my favourite shows since it premiered on UK’s Sky TV in 2019, but despite its success and accolades across the pond, I know hardly anyone else — especially in the States — who’s seen it. (All but the latest Season Five are available to stream in the U.S. on Hulu.) Created by actor/writer Joe Gilgun (This Is England, The Misfits, and Irish vampire “Cassidy” in the series Preacher) and writer/producer Danny Brocklehurst, the series follows a tight friend group of petty-criminals-with-hearts-of-gold in northern England. The Anglo-Irish ensemble cast includes Gilgun as “Vinnie” (the heart, soul, and perpetually exasperated leader of his band of well-meaning misfits whom he cares for like a tender mama bear), Michelle Keegan, Damien Molony, Aaron Heffernan, Bronagh Gallagher, Tom Hanson, Ryan Samson, Parth Thakerar, Steve Evets (Colin the drunk from Rev), and Dominic West (as Vinnie’s sex-addicted boundary-less physician.) It’s laugh-out-loud funny and an endearing portrait of a loving, if dysfunctional, “logical” family. I’ve watched every episode at least three or four times. It’s at turns delightful, clever, and touching in ways that catch you off guard. I was chuffed to hear production on its sixth season is about to begin in a few months. Now, to fire up my VPN and track down the 2023 holiday special I somehow missed last month, A Very Brassic Christmas. UPDATE: Found it, huzzah!
Dark Winds
Based on the Leaphorn & Chee novels by Tony Hillerman, this detective series just wrapped its second season, with Zahn McClarnon (“Officer Big” from Reservation Dogs and “Hanzee Dent” from Season 2 of Fargo) playing the lead character of Navajo police officer Joe Leaphorn. Set in the 1970s on Navajo land in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, the performances are stellar and the writing is outstanding. The entire writing staff for the series, which has been renewed for a third season in 2025, is Native American. McClarnon is captivating in a role that is the polar opposite of his “Big” on Rez Dogs. Something I appreciated about this series as a non-Native person as I read more about it was the course correction creators made between Season 1 and 2 after receiving criticism for not getting some of the Navajo cultural details right. Director Chris Eyre, who is a member of the Arapahoe and Cheyenne tribes, hired Navajo advisor George R. Joe to help improve cultural accuracy in the series. Progress not perfection….
Fargo (Season 3)
I’d like to think I know a thing or two about the Coen Brothers, having written a book** about the spiritual dimensions of their oeuvre a while back. I’ve watched each season of the television iteration of Fargo, understanding that none was meant to replicate the iconic film, but merely to pay homage to and be ‘inspired by” it in a thematic sense. All the seasons have been good — better than a lot of other series out there — but Season 5, which premiered at the tail end of 2023, has finally captured the soul of the Coeneverse as I understand it. And it’s dark. If you are a fan of Joel and Ethan’s filmography, this is the season not to miss. Probably the most disconcerting thing about this season is how plausible it is at this moment in time. (In last week’s episode, when a Waco-esque standoff between a local sheriff who doesn’t recognize the authority of the federal government, “YMCA” by the Village People plays. It’s a burn for the ages (IYKYK). And Juno Temple, who you probably know best as Keeley from Ted Lasso, is staggeringly, face-meltingly superb in a role that could not be more different from the one that brought her world renown. I smell and Emmy next year.
For All Mankind
Imagine if the Russians had beaten the Americans to the moon. That’s what this truly great, woefully overlooked Apple+ series, which just wrapped its fourth season last week, imagines. I’m not a sci-fi fan and the alternate history genre (see The Man In The High Castle, for example) can be too mind-bendy for me to fully enjoy, but this one manages to strike just the right balance between actual history and imagined history had the “space race” (and Cold War) turned out differently. I’m told seven seasons of the series have been planned. They’re on Mars at the moment. Whatever will happen next? Dunno, but I”ll be watching and you’ve got plenty of time to catch up on the first four seasons before Season 5 appears sometime around Christmas.
Hijack
Pretty much all you need to know is that Idris Elba is a passenger on a plane that is hijacked mid-flight. It’s the suspense-action genre at its finest without there being snakes involved. I could not look away and kept coming back for more.
Julia
Somehow, the first season of the dramedic (sure, we’ll call that a word) series with Sara Lancashire as Julia Child missed me entirely when it appeared in 2022, but when Season 2 premiered at the end of November, I tuned in as Lancashire is force of nature in the world of British television. (Have you seen Happy Valley? Last Tango in Halifax?) She’s fabulous and PERFECT to portray the iconic Mrs. Childs, particularly with beloved David Hyde Pierce playing the chef’s husband, Paul Childs. Did I mention BeBe Neuwirth and Isabella Rosselini are series regulars? Come on. What’s not to love? Julia brings me so much joy. They can’t make Season 3 fast enough for me.
Somebody, Somewhere
Bridget Everett, Jeff Hiller, and Murray Hill are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
The Bear
I don’t actually have to tell you to watch this exquisitely acted, passionately crafted, magnificent love letter to Chicago, do I?
The Morning Show
I feel like this show should get more attention and kudos than it does. Last year brought the finest performances yet in Season 3 of the A-list ensemble featuring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass (whom I ADORE as an actor and a human — his quirky indie film Biosphere with the always wonderful Sterling K. Brown is worth checking out, too, btw); Greta Lee, and Jon Hamm in a role that falls somewhere on the evil scale between darkly charismatic Dick Draper and the frighteningly believable sadistic Christo-fascist sheriff Roy Tillman in Season 5 of Fargo. Eesh. As tech billionaire Paul Marks, Hamm is very good at being very bad. Elon could only dream of possessing a scintilla of Paul’s charm with which to obscure his dastardly intentions for the world. The whole cast is strong, but Aniston stands out, delivering a complex, powerful performance as America’s media sweetheart who fell from grace, repented publicly, clawed her way back, and simply refuses to let any man steal her power again if not her joy.
The Woman in the Wall
This limited British series featuring Ruth Wilson and Daryl McCormack (the gorgeous Irishman who plays Eve Hewson’s clever/complicated/cute love interest in Bad Sisters) is a mystery/crime procedural — a British genre I have become obsessed with since Patti Smith wrote about it in her 2015 book M Train — about the survivors of the infamous Mother and Baby Homes and Magdalene laundries in Ireland. I watched the series on the BBC last year and it begins airing on Showtime next week in the United States. It’s excellent. Highly recommend.
Television Docu-Series
Fun fact: I was a soccer cheerleader. (See below. I have receipts.)
The prep school I attended didn’t have an American football team, but it did have soccer and basketball teams, and for six years, throughout junior and senior high school, I was a cheerleader for the Kingsmen (cringe) soccer boys soccer squad. In the fall, I cheered on the sidelines, pompoms, nude pantyhose, royal-blue lollipops and all, for our soccer team. And in the winter and spring, I cheered for the basketball team. And I have the wonky left knee from an ill-landed jumping split to prove it.
While I’m decidedly not a sports enthusiast — the Cubs are an exception and I married into that particular religion — as my son played soccer throughout most of his childhood, I became something of a fan of “the beautiful game.” We’d watch the World Cup and cheer for Argentina (The Lad is a Messi fan, as is Pope Francis, so by default, I am, too.)
I am also an OG, diehard fan of Mr. Blake Lively himself, Ryan Reynolds. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen everything that particular way-more-handsome-than-someone-that-funny-should-be Canadian has recorded on film. Deadpool and Deadpool 2 both would be on my desert island DVD list and I will be the first person in line at the nearest cinema on July 26, 2024 when Deadpool The Threequel opens, even if I have to wear three masks and a hazmat suit to be in the theater.
During the early days of lockdown, I became enamored with the Apple+ series Mythic Quest. (If you’ve not seen Season 1 Episode 10, the one they filmed remotely about lockdown, it’s exceptionally good — it’s this one — please check it out. So good.) Mythic Quest is an ensemble endeavor, but it is led by Rob McElhenney (who most folks likely know from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which he co-created with Charlie Day and co-stars in with his wife Kaitlin Olson.) McElhenney is great in MQ and I’d recommend giving it a go if you haven’t.
So, back in the fall of 2020, Deadpool and McElhenney, who had never met IRL but had slipped into each others DMs on the socials and forged a digital friendship, decided it might be fun/interesting/a-cure-for-the-lockdown-doldrums to buy a smallish football team together and maybe make a documentary about their Quixotic adventures, which is how a British Columbian mega movie star girl dad and a successful TV actor from Philadelphia bought AFC Wrexham, a struggling Welsh team in the fifth-tier championship league of the English football league system in a small city in northeast Wales that had seen better days, for £2 million.
Neither Reynolds nor McElhenney knew much at all about football (aka, soccer). Their nonfiction story shares many similarities with the fictional tale of Ted Lasso, which, by the way, I assume I don’t have to remind or convince anyone here to watch or revisit as it’s one of the best stories ever told on the small screen. Aaaaaaanyway, Reynolds and McElhenney are both more Coach Beard than Coach Lasso with big sweary splashes of Roy Kent on top. And it’s pitch perfect cocktail.
Welcome to Wrexham premiered on Hulu in late August 2022, I watched those first episodes the day they dropped, and I’ve been hooked on the quest of The Red Dragons and their new North American owners ever since. The second season of the docuseries aired last fall, and it has — thanks be to God — been renewed for a third season that will air later this year.
The show has all the elements of the kind of sports films I’ve never really taken a shine to but know about because Zeitgeist, flicks such as Rudy and Hoosiers with a bit of Slapshot thrown in for good measure. But make no mistake: Welcome to Wrexham is not really a sports documentary. It’s a documentary about relationships: between Reynolds and McElhenney, the duo and the supporters and players of Wrexham AFC, the team and the larger Wrexham community, friends and families within the community; between players, players and their families, Wrexham and its rivals (including its own difficult past) and so much more. The series manages to be compelling (in that sporty do-the-thing-to-get-the-points way and narratively) — funny, emotionally intelligent, and brave.
Apart from the natural arc of winning and losing matches and seasons, of expectations and hope versus experience and history, the series has delved deeply and sensitively into real people’s experiences in the game of life (sorry, it was too easy), challenges such as miscarriage, neurodiversity, misogyny, patriarchy, divorce, physical and mental wounds, death, disillusionment, and the heart-wrenching/heartwarming complexity of family systems, including Reynolds’ and McElhenney’s families of origins. One of my favourite episodes from Season 2 tells the stories of relationships between parents and their adult children, including a Wrexham player who’s father is gay and meeting McElhenney’s mother(s), who are lesbians. (Two of his siblings also are part of the LGBTQI+ community.)
I love this show. LOVE it. I have yet to watch an episode and not wind up in tears at least once and laughing my arse off moments later. It’s fantastic television with a great back story and two menschy Hollywood dudes having a real-life bromance with each other and the residents of a beleaguered but irrepressible town in Wales, whose lives they change for the better by helping breathe new life into their football club — one of the oldest in the world playing at Y Cae Ras (“The Racecourse” in Welsh), which is the world's oldest international football stadium — and their community.
You should be watching Welcome to Wrexham.
I don’t watch reality TV, unless The Great British Bake Off and The Great Pottery Throw Down count as such. (I don’t think they do.) I’ve never seen a full episode of The Bachelor, for instance, but I’m not judging you if that’s your happy place. (Fine, I am probably judging you a little. (Hi, Sandi, I love you.)
But I have been watching more docuseries of late and 2023 was a strong year for such fare. Here are two of my favourite general-interest docuseries followed by a sub-genre I’ll explore a little more in depth.
Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper
I come from a birding people. My parents loved birdwatching so much that they spent their honeymoon at an Audubon center on Cape Cod. During the first years of COVID, when humans stopped rushing around long enough for a peace to lure all sorts of wildlife back to un-wild places, my husband and I spent hours listening to and looking at birds in the canyon beneath our back porch. No fewer than three sets of binoculars live on top of bird guides on a bench next to the living room coffee table and we even bought night-vision binos at one point to get a better look at the parliament of Great Horned owls that returned to our neighborhood in autumn 2020 (and have not yet left.)
So, I will watch a bird show. I know this about me. What I didn’t know was how much I’d appreciate the wide-eyes enthusiasm of the host of the National Geographic’s Extraordinary Birder series, which premiered last summer. Most people will know Christian Cooper from an incident that happened in New York’s Central Park in October 2020 when a white woman, Amy Cooper, falsely accused Christian Cooper, a lifelong birder who is Black, of threatening her and was shown in a widely-shared video calling police to report him.“Unfortunately, we live in an era with things like Ahmaud Arbery, where black men are seen as targets,” Cooper told CNN at the time. “This woman thought she could exploit that to her advantage, and I wasn’t having it.”
Three years later, Mr. Cooper, a warmhearted enthusiast with a broad, easy smile and deeply kind vibe who seems to have put the nasty incident in his rear view mirror, found himself traveling the world with National Geographic as the host of his own bird-watching docuseries. It’s fascinating, literally wonder-filled, informative, and sometimes emotionally surprising.
It’s the feeliest of feel-good TV. I’m such a fan and hope the series gets renewed for a second season.
In a dozen-and-a-half 25-minute-long episodes spread over three seasons from 2020 to 2023 — the third and final series aired last fall — this quirky. surprisingly addictive series made by and starring (largely behind the shaky camera) filmmaker John Wilson chronicles his journeys as he follows his nose, curiosity, and imagination through New York City and occasionally well beyond it.
Wilson is awkward, nerdy, and courageous. The conceit is that he is giving the audience advice on how to do various things as he’s figuring out how to do them (or find the answer, meaning, or connection between things and people) while walking down the street, riding the subway, flying in coach, or driving (badly) a rental car somewhere in the America that exists outside the five boroughs of metropolitan New York. The result is, as one critic put it, “funny, sad, and, in the end, shockingly profound” with stories that, as another critic surmised, contain “a hint of darkness and a wealth of empathy.” Yes, precisely.
Putting the ‘cult’ in culture
There was a bumper crop of documentary series with religious themes, particularly the sub-genre of spiritual abuse and/or cults, in 2023. One was creepier and weirder than the next. I watched most of them at some point or another, one more horrifying than the next, including Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe, Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence (you might want to watch this one with the lights on and not right before you go to bed; and if you’ve got a kid away at college, just know you ARE going to want to check on them immediately); Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, and Krishnas: Gurus. Karma. Murder.
But the most bizarre, troubling, and confounding of them all was Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God. The three-part docuseries tells the incredible tale of Amy Carlson, an unremarkable woman from Kansas — mother of three young children and manager of a McDonald’s — transforms herself into the cult leader of a small but wildly devoted clutch of followers who believe she is Mother God, the reincarnation of Jesus, Joan of Arc, and Marilyn Monroe, who birthed and bears the weight of all of humanity on her shoulders, and receives messages directly from spirit guides including the late Robin Williams.
Carlson, who died in 2021 of anorexia, alcoholism, and the ingestion of massive amounts of colloidal silver at the age of 45, led the Love Has Won cult for more than a decade, attracting new followers and supporting their small community by live-streaming almost everything the group did 24-7 for years.
There’s no way I could do the twists and turns of the plot justice in a few paragraphs, so I’m not even going to attempt it. I’ll just say, if you’re going to watch one of these cult docuseries, this is the one. There is no narrator and much of the film is created from footage the director Hannah Olson gleaned from thousands of hours of live streaming footage.
It is not for the faint of heart, but Olson makes some judicious choices about what to include and show and what to leave out, stopping short of exploitation, while allowing those involved to tell their stories their way. It’s a troubling and fascinating study of how seemingly bright, “normal” people can deconstruct easily under the right circumstances and the wrong influences. There is a subtext to the story that traces the strange phenomenon of how, in the age of QAnon, MAGA, and Trumpism, parts of the New Age (for lack of a better descriptor) community swung so far to the left they wound up on the far right, bedeviled by conspiracy theories and false prophets (spiritual and otherwise).
It’s a tragic, mind-melting story of idiocy and illness, delusions of grandeur and the primal need for belonging and meaning, and how woefully misguided slaking that spiritual thirst can be when vulnerable people trust grifters (or when we believe everything we think.)
There’s an intriguing interview with Olson HERE that I would suggest revisiting after you’ve watched the limited series. And don’t google Carson ahead of time. You won’t believe what you read until you see what you see in the film.
After you’ve watched it and finish the Googling that surely will follow, you’ll need a palate cleanser. Might I suggest the short films that follow next — or any of the Wes Anderson Dahl shorts mentioned earlier — and a brisk walk in the natural world.
Short Films
From Jerusha Hess and Jared Hess, the directing team that brought us Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, comes this remarkable animated short told from the perspective of a Death Row inmate on the eve of his execution as he reflects on his life.
Tim Blake Nelson is brilliant as the voice of the man who, unlike some folks who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes and spent years in prison, some of them awaiting execution for crimes they didn’t commit or that didn’t happen at all, the man admits he is guilty of acts that got him to his final meal. Blake Nelson’s performance is winsome. Tender, calm, repentant. He’s ready for whatever happens next. Are we?
The film was created by teams of animation artists from the U.S. and Latin America, each tackling one of the five senses of the human body, while the man considers the 95 more that might exist once the first five cease to exist when we die. It might sound like somber material, but it isn’t. It sings. It’s glorious. Waititi called it, “One of the most beautiful films I've seen in a long time,” and I agree with him wholeheartedly. Unlike many other short films, Ninety-Five Senses, which has been shortlisted for an Oscar this year, is streaming in full for free HERE.
This 33-minute animated Peter & the Wolf, which Gavin Friday narrates in his sonorous, purring brogue, began 20 years ago when Friday and Bono collaborated on a book (for children of all ages) and a musical reimagining of Sergei Prokofiev’s symphonic telling of the Peter and the Wolf Ukrainian folktale (performed by the Friday-Seezer Ensemble) with original illustrations by Bono.
During the early COVID lockdowns, the lifelong friends came up with the idea to animate the drawings and make a film. The result is more than a little bit magic. While the color palette is a punk-esque black-white-grey-and-Scorsese-red ( a nod to one of U2’s iconic color schemes), there is nothing stark or binary about the story, which has been smartly updated to fit contemporary sensibilities.
There are a few twists that Prokofiev might not have envisioned when he composed a symphony around an old folk story in 1936, but to my eye they enhance the story and bring a new spiritual depth to it. I actually found myself choking back tears toward the end, particularly when Friday’s song, “There’s Nothing to Be Afraid Of,” plays as the credits roll.
I’ve written about the film over at U2.com, touched on it in a MFT post here late last year, and have a longer conversation with Mr. Friday about it coming out on the band’s site soon. I will update this post with the link to that piece once it’s live.
In the meantime, give this beauty a go. It’s truly special and contains a powerful message no matter how old the viewer may be.
This 23-minute Northern Irish gem won the 2023 Oscar for live-action dramatic short and a BAFTA for best British short, but it was nearly impossible to find streaming in the United States until just recently. (It’s been available on the BBC’s iPlayer and RTÉ Player for many months.)
An Irish Goodbye is one of my favourite films of any genre or length from the last five years. I’ve watched it over and over again and have evangelized many friends and family to join me in the cult of Lorcan and Turlough McCaffrey fandom, too. If you follow the link above the photo, you’ll find U.S. viewing options (including Amazon Prime, where it is included in Season 2 of Short Film Showcase via a subscription to Acorn TV). It was in that series that I also discovered several more, mostly Irish shorts from years past worth watching, including the disturbing Psychic, starring Brendan Gleeson and his real-life sons Brian and Domhnall Gleeson as a father and sons who have a complicated, troubling relationship with each other and the rest of the world.
Worth Revisiting: TV Series
When I was a grad student in the mid-1990s, I had a cat named Ed Chigliak.
The big-boned, skittish orange tabby cat got his name from my deep devotion to the television series Northern Exposure and its half-Native-American half-Caucasian aspiring cinephile-cum-medicine-man holy-fool-jack-of-all-trades of the same name, portrayed by the actor Darren E. Burrows.
I loved — and still love — the soulful dramedy (given to regular bouts of magical thinking) set in fictional Cicely, Alaska that ran on CBS from 1990 to 1995 with the white hot fire of a million suns. I cried when Dr. Fleishman (Rob Morrow) left the show. I cried even harder when it was cancelled.
Almost immediately, 20-year-old me fell head-over-heels for the tall drink of iced Roobios tea that is John Corbett, who played Chris Stevens, the formerly incarcerated bad-boy turned philosopher-radio-DJ, at least a decade before Carrie Bradshaw ever laid eyes on his furniture-making Aidan in Sex and the City.
Northern Exposure remains one of my litmus tests for compatibility (along with how many times you’ve seen Harold & Maude and where a person’s allegiance falls in the more location-specific New Haven pizza wars — Frank Pepe’s, obviously). I’m not saying we can’t be friends if you’ve not seen or appreciated the series created by Joshua Brand and the late John Falsey (who hailed from New Haven, btw, and, I’m assuming, was a Pepe’s man). But I’m also not not saying that, either.
The first significant piece of writing I did that took the spiritual significance of popular culture seriously was a paper I wrote on a Brother word processor about the spiritual, religious, and philosophical themes of Northern Exposure during my first semester of seminary in 1993. It set me on a trajectory academically and professionally that I’m still following 30 years later. That paper is somewhere in this house and before we move later this year, I’m determined to find it. If I do, I will share it in this space and that’s a promise. Pinky swear.
After the denizens of Cicely signed off for the last time after 110 episodes on July 26, 1995, it was hard to find. I don’t remember there being reruns and I would scour video stores for VHS tapes of episodes to no avail.
About 15 years ago, a box set of the entire series was released on DVD and came in a faux-shearling shoulder bag, which has been among my most prized possessions ever since. But when the dawn of streaming arrived, my hopes of being able to watch the whole series without having to fiddle with a DVD player or finicky laptop drive were perpetually dashed. About twice a year, I’d check to see whether the series would show up streaming online somewhere (legally or otherwise) and always got skunked.
I read the accounts of strife between the creators, rumors of a revamp that came and went with the seasons, and eventually I’d pull out my faux-shearling set and make it through a season or two before moving on to other things.
When COVID hit, I spent the better part of a week doing a deep dive on Reddit and in other darker corners of the internet, looking for somewhere to stream the Northern Exposure. I didn’t just miss Ed and Chris, Joel and Maggie (even though I never liked her), the sage Holling Vincoeur and impossible Maurice Minnifield, the enigmatic, mesmeric Marilyn Whirlwind; plainspoken Ruth-Ann and Walt and Shelly; Adam Arkin’s “Adam” and Valerie Mahaffey’s “Eve” and the rest of the unique characters who passed through Cicely — I needed them. Badly.
And yet 2020 came and went with no Northern Exposure streaming joy, and so did 2021, 2022, and most of 2023 until suddenly — like Ed’s spirit guide, One-Who-Waits (Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman), manifesting beside him at the counter of the The Brick —
IT JUST … APPEARED.
It was the late afternoon of August 15, 2023 (on what would have been my beloved father’s 93rd birthday) when I got home from the hair salon, opened Amazon Prime on my laptop and … all six seasons were there waiting for me.
I’m not sure if I wept (I probably did), but I know I shouted for joy and did a celebratory jig and ooo’ed and ahh’ed as I streamed the pilot episode before, in a feat of uncharacteristic self-control, I resisted the play-next-episode feature and pried myself away in order to meet a book manuscript deadline a few days later. But once that work was done, I was off to Cicely…lavishing in 109 more episodes that I watched and rewatched over the next ensuing months.
Heavenly.
Might I offer the very deepest bows of gratitude to whichever studio honcho finally made this happen. May God bless you and keep you in a long, happy life.
I can scarcely believe I’m typing these words, and my heart is full of joy as I do: You can stream all six seasons of Northern Exposure on Amazon Prime right now (and, hopefully, for as long as there are streams to be streamed.)
But just in case, my inner Girl Scout is keeping my prized faux-shearling box set and a portable DVD player.
Here (in alphabetical order) are a few more series I revisited in 2023 — some have new seasons that have just aired or are about to — that hold up and worth another look:
Astrid (aka Astrid et Raphaëlle)
French crime drama featuring a neurodiverse character, Astrid, who works as a crime records archivist, and her unlikely partnership and friendship with a neurotypical detective in Paris. Sara Mortenson, the actor who portrays Astrid, is not neurodiverse, which I know is a point of contention for some viewers, but I’ve read that she and the series’ writers regularly consult with neurodivergent consultants to try to get it right, and to my eye, Mortensen portrays Astrid well, with great dignity and dimension.
High Maintenance
This started as a series of shorts on YouTube, if memory serves, but eventually became an off-the-radar darling on HBO with a faithful following, including yours truly. It follows the adventures of a weed delivery guy in New York City in the 2010s and went off the air just before COVID hit. The Guy (the weed delivery guy) was so naturally pastoral and connected to his clients (and the world around him) it was inspiring no matter how eccentric or bizarre his encounters were. I miss him. Make a point of going back for this one.
“Long, Long Time” episode of The Last of Us
I wrote about this episode almost a year ago, at the time saying in part, that it was “one of the most emotionally affecting hours of television I’ve ever experienced.” That was not an overstatement. I still regularly think about moments from the relationship between Nick Offerman (Bill) and Murray Barlett (Frank). The strawberry patch scene alone still devastates me. Last week, Offerman won an Emmy for his performance, an honor richly deserved. Even if you don’t care for this genre of fare (I generally do not) and haven’t seen nor intend to see any other part of the series, please see this one. It’s one of the finest hours of television I’ve watched in my lifetime and I’ve watched a lot of television.
Moone Boy
This is a family favourite at my house. Chris O’Dowd playing the imaginary friend of, well, basically himself as a boy growing up in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s in rural(ish) Ireland. Clever. Hilarious. Sweet. The “Goodfellas” altar boys episode (S1 E5) makes me laugh harder than few things do.
Melinda turned me on to this one. It’s in German (not my favourite language to listen to) with English subtitles, but it’s got good character development and a intriguing narrative. But the real star of the show (and this is what Melinda told me that got me to give it a try): “My God, the costumes.” It’s costumer porn in the same way that Outlander is knitter porn.
The Great British Pottery Throw Down
Keith Brymer Jones weeps over pottery (and potters overcoming self doubt) and we ugly cry right along with him. This wonderful series, now hosted by Sister Michael of Derry Girls herself — Siobhán McSweeney — has just returned for it seventh season. It’s been on since 2015, I discovered it during in the second year of COVID (thanks Kell), and you might want to just go ahead and start with Series 4, which was filmed during the height of the pandemic and … I’ve yet to make it through an episode without crying. And neither has Keith.
The IT Crowd
Mid-early-oughts. The IT department of some soulless London company. Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, and Katherine Parkinson are inept, quirky, cranky, and accident prone. “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” If you’ve never seen it, you’re in for a treat. May I direct your attention in particular to S3 E4: “Jen, this is the internet.”
Shetland
Its eighth season just finished airing in the UK and is streaming presently in the US. This detective procedural set in Scotland’s remote Shetland islands is visually stunning and features some of the most endearing, compelling characters in the genre. The episodes are based on books by the marvelous British mystery crime novelist, Ann Cleeves, who is an absolute treasure. She also writes …
Vera
Featuring the inimitable Brenda Blethyn as Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope of the fictional Northumberland & City Police in the northeast of England, the series’ 13th season has just begun airing on ITV in the UK, but the other 12 seasons are available to stream in the U.S. Vera’s adventures in her bucket hat and old whale blue tank of a Land Rover, pursing her lips and calling everyone “pet” are based on Cleeves’ novels. It’s addictive, “‘am warnin’ ya’”, but, like its kissing cousin Sheltand, it’s perfect by-the-fire-on-a-cold-winter’s-night viewing.
Young Sheldon
Honestly, I don’t know how I missed this one for so long. I’m a huge fan of Big Bang Theory. In fact, most days, I’ve usually got a season running in the background as I work on other things. I soothes me in the same way that Schitt’s Creek or reruns of Friends on hotel TVs do. For whatever reason, when the Big Bang Theory spinoff, telling Sheldon Cooper’s origin story, began airing in 2017, I ignored it. Perhaps it was because of the Mount Olympus-level regard with which I hold the actor Laurie Metcalf, who portrayed Sheldon’s mother in the original series. I never gave it much thought. She’s not in Young Sheldon and I mean, who could possibly….
Well, I was wrong.
Somewhere around last Thanksgiving, several friends mentioned that they’d been watching Young Sheldon. How odd. After all these years? Why? What’s going on? As it turns, Young Sheldon is about to begin airing its final season on February 15. Because of the disparate nature of the friends who suddenly, six years after its debut, had caught the Young Sheldon bug, I decided to give it a go. In a word, it’s outstanding. Funny, smart, poignant, and it also depicts Christian faith in a way that is well informed, respectful without being deferential, smartly funny and serious at the same time. I had no idea. I should have been watching this well before 2023, but I’m grateful nevertheless that I found my way to it.
And, by the way, Zoey Perry who plays Mary Cooper (the character Metcalf played in Big Bang Theory) is every bit as good — if not better — in the role that so easily could be played for cheap laughs but isn’t. Plus, Annie Potts is Young Meemaw. I mean, OMG ANNIE POTTS!
So, in summation, Sheldon Cooper et famille, young or old, are very much worth revisiting.
Well folks, that’s all she wrote.
Go forth and watch the things.
May we all, as my friend Gareth says, try to “tell a better story” this year.
Housekeeping
There are some seismic personal changes on the horizon in 2024 (I’ll say more in the coming weeks and months), which I anticipate will be accompanied by a geyser of new stories, insights, words, and images in this space and elsewhere.
In 2024, I’ve decided not to place any of my content here behind a paywall.
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**P.P.S. I rarely do this, but when I went to find a link to The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers, the book I wrote 15 years ago about the filmmakers and spiritual themes that run through their films (including all their movies up to A Serious Man), I discovered that the book is on sale right now for $2.19 (with overnight delivery for Prime members). So, if you’ve never read it and would like a copy, this is your moment.
Speaking of gifts, as this post was intended to run on the Feast of the Epiphany (but then was waylaid by some kind of not-COVID (thankfully) crud that laid me out for the better part of a week, I thought I’d share one of my favourite Christmastide images from the way-back machine: This is The Lad, then age 10, portraying Balthazar the Magus in his first Christmas pageant. Regal then. Regal now. We’re so proud of the man he’s becoming, spreading his wings, making his way in the world, and trying to make it a better place. (Stay warm, Vas. Sub-zero temps are no joke!)
In this new year, please let us strive to be brave and kind. With others. With ourselves.
Remember: You haven’t met yet everyone you will love, and you haven’t met yet everyone who will love you.
And, as John and Yoko said of new years, Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear….
War is over
If you want it
Big love (and buckets of hope) for whatever 2024 has for us,
Oh, and I just snapped up a copy of The Dude Abides on Amazon! Only two copies left at the low low price of $2.19, people! Get it now!
You have confirmed some of my favs like Young Sheldon, IT Crowd, Moone Boy, Reservation Dogs, Are You There God? (We are SO children of the same generation!), etc. and given me some new possibilities for my to-watch list! Frybread Face is at the top! How had I not heard of this yet?