We’ve all wondered, watched all the documentaries, and now, finally, we can know the truth.
It’s no secret that I’m in full flight from reality. Can’t watch the news or even ESPN. So I go hunting for diversion. Sometimes the universe provides. Last night, in desperation, I watched All Creatures Great and Small on Netflix. Breaking one of my own rules btw. Old BBC shows are not on my list. Bad sound, worse videography. Even good shows look like they’re produced by a camcorder and transferred haphazardly to VHS.
What a pleasant surprise. I’m not much for reruns, but I’m old enough now not to remember details or plot resolutions. The show is about a country vet beginning his career in the north of England with an eccentric senior vet and his callow but charming brother. Thing is, it’s still funny and the sound and video quality are remarkably good. When I texted my wife about this discovery, she observed that some things are timeless and asked if there was any Waugh comedy at Netflix.
[I think she’s venturing, too, because before I found ACG&S at Netflix, we jointly discovered that the original 1967 version of The Forsyte Saga is buried within Youtube in 10 minute chunks, in amazingly sharp black and white with quite acceptable sound quality. You’ve got to give it a try, even you millennials. The greatest soap opera of all time. It’s going to take more than 30 minutes for you to get hooked, though. Nothing gets rolling until the stick-up-his-ass accountant Soames Forsyte catches his first glimpse of Irenie, the Femme Fatale who drives the entire multi-generational saga. You hate Soames and then slowly, slowly, slowly come to admire him. What makes it literature. Ask my wife. She’ll explain it to you.]
At any rate, I searched Netflix for comedy. Not much Waugh but happily enough not all the titles are romcoms or gross-out garbage. So much for my arrogant presumptions. There’s some genuinely funny stuff out there. Black comedy is my wife’s favorite, and mine too, which is why I probably gave up when Netflix inexplicably shelved Dylan Moran’s Black Books, the evilest sitcom ever produced. Why bother, I thought. The millennials don’t even know what a sense of humor is. They laugh when they fart or queef and that’s what they think funny is.
But I was wrong. For example, the movie represented by the graphic above is a very serious and sober documentary about Hitler’s career in America after he didn’t shoot himself in the bunker. It’s a Norwegian-Spanish production. The critics seem not to like it because it doesn’t attack Republicans enough. They call it unfocused. I think it’s plenty focused. It attacks everyone, including the very people who made it. The movie’s executive producer is an onscreen villain of the piece, demanding blood and guts as a necessary part of the content. The movie is an unexpected delight. Brilliant, hilarious, and deadpan. My favorite combination.
Well, you don’t have to watch this one, but my advice for the dark heart of February, which is always my worst month of the year, is look for the laughs, the bleaker and nastier the better.