I Like Masterpiece Classic On PBS. It Calms Me.

We've had an unbelievably busy January so far.  I'm not complaining at all; it's been fun. Between the holiday season fallout, our new affiliation with a children's theater company in Lenox (a truly wonderful bunch of people), putting up the one-act play festival at Main Street Stage, swimming lessons with Elliot at the Y, a revitalized and gigging RBIT, and our normal day-to-day charges, we don't have much downtime. Or sleep-time, even.

We're going at least as hard as Obama. By the way: thank Jesus for Obama (or thank Buddha, Vishnu, someone else, or even nobody - all okay).

A nice bonus - between the two of us we made $300 this month for acting.  This actually means between the two of us we probably put in over five million hours of work.

Occasionally Lex and I collapse when we're in the same room together, sometimes on the couch in the living room, and sometimes even within reaching distance of the TV remote. On Sunday evenings we watch Masterpiece Classic on PBS.  It's becoming a habit.  

We happened on Tess of the d'Urbervilles one night. It was mesmerizing, the production itself. Seriously.  Especially the acting;  the approach seemed subtly different than most of what we see on American TV.  Plus, we like the accents.

It's the first time in a while I've seen something on TV with some novelty - true, honest-to-goodness novelty. It's not like the Japanese game show remake where people slam into moving walls and fall into a pool.  There's a place in my viewing schedule for that too, but what I've seen of Masterpiece Classic doesn't seem like the product of a commitee or focus group.  I can't help being drawn to that - decisions based on taste and vision.

The performances seemed less self conscious than what I'm used to seeing. The set and scenery were authentic, unpretentious and at times breathtaking.  The cinematography was brilliant.

Less impressive was Masterpiece Classic's take on Wuthering Heights, in part due to Lex's complaints about how unfaithful they were to the novel, which she was reading during the course of the series (there have been two episodes for each story so far).  It was more than that though - the actors were not as appealing as in Tess.  Plus the production approach, and this disturbed me a bit, was I think too close to what we saw in Tess.  I hope they mix it up a bit for the rest of the season.    

"That's totally not right," says Lex, at a scene that offends her.  There's a hint of satisfaction in her voice - I can see how this could be fun for her.  But it puts us both off this version of Wuthering Heights.  We added the Ralph Feinnes/Juliette Binoche to our Netflix - hopefully that will satisfy us.