Since I started writing about books I’ve read, I’ve found that more and more people come up to me in real life and start talking to me about books. I’m continually amazed that any ‘real people’ take any notice of what I write online; but given that at least some people notice, I thought I should balance those posts with one about veging in front of the TV, which I do at least as often as reading. So here are some TV shows I’ve enjoyed recently.

The Good Wife / The Good Fight

Wendy and I have recently finished an epic marathon of all seven series of The Good Wife, followed by the first season of the sequel series, The Good Fight. The Good Wife is about a politician’s wife whose husband is sent to prison, meaning that she has to return to her former profession as a lawyer after 13 years as a stay-at-home mother. It’s a smart show, with lots of personal drama played out against a background of politics, law and technology. The Good Fight changes the pace and style a little, which was a bit jarring at first, but overall served to freshen the show up well. Wendy and I are both looking forward to the next season!
DVD on Amazon / Stream on Google Play / Stream on iTunes / Stream on Netflix

Mozart in the Jungle

The Amazon Prime series Mozart in the Jungle is a brilliant comedy-drama about passion, professionalism and music. Inspired by Blair Tindall’s autobiography of the same name, the show follows both the appointment of a new conductor to the New York Symphony Orchestra, and the travails of a young oboist trying to break into the orchestral ‘big league’. Wendy and I ran through all three series in a couple of weeks, and are eagerly awaiting the release of series four next month.
Stream on Amazon

The Young Pope

The Young Pope is a beautifully shot ten-parter featuring Jude Law as the first American pope. The plot essentially concerns whether Pope Pius XIII is a megalomaniac intent on the destruction of the Church or an actual Saint capable of performing miracles. Or, I guess, both. This is a series unlike anything else I’ve seen on TV – artistic, dramatic, hilarious, over-the-top, and just plain weird in parts (including the opening shots). I beleive a follow up series is being made next year, and I can’t wait.
DVD on Amazon / Stream on Google Play / Stream on iTunes

The Bridge / Bron / Broen

Despite being years late to the party, I’ve really enjoyed watching the first two series of The Bridge recently. It’s an expertly crafted bi-lingual Scandinavian crime drama. Both series are dramatic and thrilling, but also filled with enough humour and levity to prevent it becoming depressing. Absolutely brilliant – I just wish I’d watched it before I visited Cophenhagen and Malmö last year!
DVD on Amazon / Stream on Google Play / Stream on iTunes

Amanda Knox

The Neflix special Amanda Knox is one of those programmes that feels a bit ethically conflicted, profiting (as it surely does) from the murder of a 21-year-old young woman. But it nonetheless gave an intriguing and thoughtful insight into the events surrounding the crime and provided food for thought and reflection.
Stream on Google Play / Stream on Netflix

American Vandal

The Netflix series American Vandal is a brilliant, hilarious yet strangely dramatic spoof of true crime series, and especially the podcast series Serial. The (scripted, fictional) series follows an amateur investigation into which student at a high school is accused of vandalising 27 staff members’ cars by drawing “phallic images” on them. It’s ridiculous yet brilliant.
Stream on Netflix

Misbehaving was the autobiography of the professional life of Richard Thaler, recently awarded the Nobel Prize for economics. I found it completely thrilling! Thaler talked about he and his colleagues changed the ‘standard’ view of economics. It began with early career insights, where Thaler realised there was something ‘not quite right’ with standard economic theories. The book then described the whole process of developing those insights into formal theories, debating and refining them with the help of peers, publishing them (and dealing with critical responses to publication), and ultimately putting his by-now largely accepted theories into practice through developing government policy. Transforming a field and then using those new insights for the public good would be a dream come true for many of us – and this book was the easy-read description of how Thaler did exactly that. I couldn’t have asked for more!
Buy on Amazon | View on Goodreads

Despite being a fan of Jeff Wayne’s musical version, I’ve always avoided reading H. G. Wells’s original The War of the Worlds on the basis that I rarely enjoy science fiction. It is one of those books which is so notable and worthy of reading that my opinions on it seem a little extraneous, but for what it’s worth, I wish I’d come round to it sooner. Much of it struck me as being an allegory for major social change, with the major characters having reasonably stereotypical responses – but reading it like that makes the end a little more depressing than I think the author intended.
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Last month, I really enjoyed reading Ali Smith’s Autumn, so this month, I read the next book in the series: Winter. Winter tells the story of Sohpia, a former lover of Daniel, Autumn’s main character. Winter explores many of the same themes, including the passage of time and reality versus perception. It continues with the same revealing juxtaposition of art and events in the contemporary real world, this time including the election of Trump and the Grenfell Tower fire. Like Autumn, this is a book in which every page forces the reader to look at something from an unusual and intriguing new perspective. I very much enjoyed it, and look forward to re-reading both books some time, as I’m sure there’s much in them that passed me by at first reading.
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Tim Harford’s Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy provided an enjoyable set of brief stories about the varied impact of inventions on economies. The book sometimes felt a bit superficial, but I suppose the “50 Things” format will always suffer from that. Many of the stories are well known and familiar, but the breadth of stuff covered is very impressive, and Harford occasionally takes the discussion of an invention in an unexpectedly illuminating direction. I particularly enjoyed the Epilogue’s description of the decreasing cost of artificial light over the last few centuries which, as Harford says, is such a huge change that it goes beyond intuition.
Buy on Amazon | View on Goodreads (which has the book with the US title pictured above)

When people ask me what my favourite book is, I often mention Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. It had been a few years since I last read it, so I cracked it open again this month. I’d quite forgotten it’s Genevan roots, which were especially apt since I co-incidentally visited Geneva this month. Frankenstein is essentially a book about ethics, and a rather ponderous one at that – and that’s exactly why I love it. On this particularly re-reading, I was struck by the fact that Frankenstein’s creature was explicitly vegetarian (underlining his ethical benevolence). I’d never particularly noticed this before, but it makes for an interesting counterpoint to the many ‘bloody-thirsty’ popular interpretations of the character.
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Given that it was Christmas, I thought I’d also re-read Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. This re-reading was, in fact, inspired by the homage in the first line of Ali Smith’s Winter: “God was dead: to begin with.”. On this particular re-reading, I was reminded how genuinely laugh-out-loud funny the book is from time-to-time.
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