My partner and I sit down every evening around nine or so, and watch a movie or an episode from a series.
If you like mysteries, don’t overlook the British series “Vera.” It is well written, well acted, and is now in its 10th season. That sounds bigger than it is, because there are only four episodes per season.
Vera Stanhope is short, plump, and fiftysomething. She cares nothing about fashion, and usually wears a trench coat over a shapeless dress. She is also a DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) with the Northumbria and City Police. Northumbria is a county in the extreme northeast corner of England. It butts up against Scotland on the north, and the North Sea on the east. It’s not a place that I would care to live, as all the scenes of the countryside and seacoast look rather bleak and foreboding. Not to mention the fact that the average high temperatures in Jul and August are only in the mid-sixties. Her force serves the county, and the nearby city of Newcastle.
She has a staff of half a dozen or so officers, and is always accompanied by her right-hand-man, DS (Detective Sergeant) Healy, a young man probably half her age. She regularly calls people “pet” or “love” (as in, “we’re here to help you, pet”). She treats her staff like family, and has regular flashes of intuition that help her solve cases.
The only problem we can find with the program is the fault of the BBC, who a few years ago began to require that all British programs emphasize diversity at the expense of reality. Thus, you find an unusually large number of mixed-race couples in some remote corners of England. It doesn’t work, because it defies logic.
In any case, if you like the mystery genre, you will like Vera.
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