SAD-busting light entertainment: two Netflix ideas.

[oak]

Friends, this has been a long day, a long week, a long winter, and a long lockdown. SAD is kicking my butt; I'd hate to think where I'd be without my light box and Vitamin D.

Here are two recommendations I've used this week to find a little joy. Much as I love unreliable-narrator stories, my second favorite is low-stakes films/series:

1. The Clapper:

I am not much a fan of Ed Helms, Tracy Morgan, or movies about LA. Happily I was proven wrong. While this movie is pretty twee and not for everyone, I found it a delight. It really reminded me that I am human. And for once the male lead was much like an ordinary man. Imagine!

2. Dolly Parton's HeartStrings series

While there are a few clunker episodes, consensus is that "These Old Bones" is by the far the best, with "JJ Sneed" and the Vietnam War episodes are also delights.

I'm rewatching "Two Doors Down", ostensibly about a gay son and a wedding. In reality the creators crammed as many mini-crises as they could into a delightful hourlong farce. Tiny crises worthy of the films "Birdcage", "Arsenic and Old Lace", Shakespeare, or those old Roman plays where the slave inadvertently hosts a big society wedding and everything goes wrong.

There is the inevitably-ruined wedding dress, an accidental shooting, a truly histrionic Southern mother, and "surprise" nuptials among many other easily and quickly corrected messes.

So good.

Thanks for letting me positive-vent!