Binge Watching Hearts

 Over three months of binge watching from TV and the library brought me up to date on the Hallmark series "When Calls the Heart". The schmaltzy but wholesome soap is the all time top watched series on Hallmark, but it is not as good as the even longer (11 seasons) running "Call the Midwife" on PBS. Some of the oddball movies on this list were shown on the Comcast Watchathon.

Call the Midwife (Season Eleven) – 2022 (3.0). This series always manages to evoke a deep and legitimate emotion that is at the heart of the vocation of the midwives, helping people who are in need of help in times of physical, emotional and spiritual pain. Good writing captures that feeling both with ongoing characters, new additions to the cast and people just passing through. Good casting, acting, directing and production values completes the task of making it all work so well.

Anything Goes – 2021 (2.9). Some classic Cole Porter songs highlight this musical filmed from a live stage performance in London. But once again it is a delight to see the ensemble tap dancing, particularly to the title song. Sutton Foster reprieves the role of Reno for which she won the Tony in 2011. As expected the story is not much, though the 1930s cultural aspects have historic interest, especially with the a historical casting of some black players in key roles.

The Crown (Season Four) – 2021 (2.9). Great production values and good acting continue as Diana and Margaret Thatcher enter the story to add personal and political complications for the Queen. Though a viewer may feel “been there done that” about watching a retelling of the story of The Royals,it is entertaining enough with its inside the castle view. Obviously covering a multi year span of history (1979-1990) in ten episodes leaves a lot untold, but the real emphasis is on how The Crown is affected. Season Four won the Emmy for best drama series and also won many acting awards. The Diana actress was very good. Gillian Anderson as Thatcher wa a performance hard to take, as was the real Thatcher. Critics point out some historical inaccuracies, but nothing earth shaking.

Sanditon (SeasonTwo) – 2021 (2.9). Though new characters are introduced in the second season, they blend with the story arc and their interfacing with existing characters lends greater depth and feeling for the characters. Using the old Gene Siskel test, we care more what happens to them. Two cliffhangers tease the promised third season.

Boy – 2010 (2.8). Taika Waititi, half Maori and half Jewish, made this movie about the small east coast New Zealand community of his roots and an 11 year old boy growing up there in 1984. The movie has heart and humorous authenticity which though cast in an interestingly different culture, still has universal connections.

Judas and the Black Messiah – 2021 (2.8). When the family of slain Black Panther Fred Hampton is involved in making a movie telling the story of his rise and his killing, you know the FBI and the police are going to come out as villains, which is exactly what happens in this film. A sincere young black visionary meets with early organizing success in uniting the community to stand up and take care of their own, and the FBI and police quickly label him a terrorist, turn a black criminal into an infiltrator and plot his assassination. The Judas kept a very low profile thereafter, but did give an onscreen interview for the Eyes on The Prize series and then went home and committed suicide.

Lean on Pete – 2017 (2.8). This independent movie set in Oregon follows a teenage boy, ably played by Charlie Plummer,with a no-show mother and a no-good father. The boy stumbles into a job at the local racetrack while jogging one morning. The trainer he works for is not tops, evidenced by Steve Buscemi playing the part. The kid knows nothing about horses, but is a hard worker and quick learner. He ends up falling in love – with the horse after which the movie is named. When Pete is a likely candidate for the Mexican horse meat mill, the boy steals the horse and trailer and sets out to find his estranged aunt in Wyoming. The movie has heart and does not sentimentalize horse racing or Oregon.

Silent Sacrifice: Stories of Japanese-American Incarceration  – 2018 (2.8). Well done documentary about the incarceration of persons of Japanese Ancestry (three quarters of whom were American citizens) during WWII. Archival footage and interviews with prisoners and their descendants bring the story to life. Produced by American Public Television and by filmmakers concentrating mainly on persons from the Fresno California region.

West Side Story – 2021 (2.8). Spielberg must have anticipated the question when he gave the answer in an on screen graphic with the end credits of this movie saying how many jobs and worker hours the making of the movie enabled. The stage musical was a fantastic hit, the movie of 50 years ago was legitimately highly acclaimed. This remake shows what we already knew, the songs, music and dancing are iconic classics and any remake could not help but be enjoyable. But one thing the new version did remind us is that the love at first sight romance story line was actually quite shallow.

When Calls the Heart (Season Five) – 2018 (2.8). Comings and goings continue this season as the town grows. The same sorts of issues arise and are deftly handled primarily by the capable womenfolk, primarily the schoolmarm and the mayor. The preacher man who was the love interest of the mayor takes his leave from the series (apparently because the writers thought his role was tapped out and too restrictive on the mayor), though he pops back in to perform the long awaited marriage of the schoolmarm and Mountie. The Mountie survives a dangerous gang fighting assignment up north and the long expected wedding occurs, but then profound tragedy occurs in the last episode of the season. Hallmark schmaltz sometimes taps into legitimate hopeful sentiment, which is easier to ring true on the 1910s frontier.

When Calls the Heart (Season Six) – 2019 (2.8). The widowed schoolmarm passes through her initial time of grieving, aided by the arrival of baby Jack. Two new potential schoolmarm suitors arrive. Telephones come to town. Ethic extras continue to appear in the background of scenes, though in the opening Christmas show a black girl is among a group of orphans but has no lines other than sihnging Carols in a chorus. Mid season the mayor Lori Loughlin character is dumped over her off screen role in the Varsity Blues scandal, without anything dispatching her beyond a voice over by the schoolmarm writing in her journal that the mayor had to go back east a couple weeks ago to take care of her ailing mother. Unrealistically the town still does not encounter one foreign accented immigrant and no national news is mentioned, while the World War which started a couple years ago might as well be non-existent.

When Calls the Heart (Season Seven) – 2020 (2.8). The series continues to do what it does in an acceptable way, though it also continues to avoid a lot of historical reality, likely because the author on whose book the series is based as well as the die hard fans of the series are not interested in the historical realities of indigenous peoples, foreign immigrants, black and Asian settlers and a massive world war. The first motion picture comes to town though, as does the chicken pox. An early episode included a charismatic young black traveling salesman who had a fairly significant part and mentioned his parents living on the farm nearby where he grew up, raising hopes the man would become a regular character and that his parents might at least sometimes bring some produce to town to sell, so that we could meet them. Alas, it was not to be. There is a black school child now though we do not know her name and have never heard her speak or heard her spoken to. The romantic competition between the two suitors of the school marm appears to be an even match at this point.

When Calls the Heart (Season Eight) – 2021 (2.8). The series continues on apace with same occasional warm high points and also same shortfalls with one notable exception. The town now has welcomed the first black family to become a significant part of the cast. The father even becomes the new preacher, the mother quickly bonds with the other women and ends up cooking in the cafe, the young son is active but pleasant and the teen daughter is blind and musically gifted on the piano. Town romances are still always bubbling and bumbling, but in the last episode the school marm chooses between her two suitors.

When Calls the Heart (Season Nine) – 2022 (2.8). So after catching all the way up on nine seasons of this series in three months of binge watching,he question becomes whether to continue to the plane ride or bail out. As the most popular series in the history of the Hallmark channel, it is likely to continue on for many more years. The school marm seems to be the only indispensable character, and that actress has ascended to be an executive producer. Everyone and everything else is plug and play Hallmark formulaic, but it works well for what it is, just like a Hllmark card whose sentiments are predictably hokey but also appropriate to generic occassions.

In the Heights – 2021 (2.7). The stage musical debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda is brought to the screen with great exuberance, telling the story of the Washington Heights Caribbean neighborhood of NYC. Vigorous music, singing and dancing fill almost 2 ½ hours, but none seems particularly resonant with older non-Caribbean audience members.

Ridley Road – 2021 (2.6). This four part miniseries “inspired by true events” deals with English Nazis in 1962 London and the Jewish group designed to expose and defend against them. Naive Jewish girl goes inside the Nazis where her boyfriend is already a mole. BBC look of quality but no depth to the script.

This Is Us (Season Six)  - 2022 (2.6). If there was a master plan for the arc of this series, the decision for the sixth year to be the last probably undermined it. The first few years of flash backs and flash forwards worked surprisingly well, because they seemed to be appropriately balanced with the present. But the downside is that they created lots of expectations of longer backward and forward visits, and that expectation ultimately could not be met. This last year was a disappointing jumble of “remember this”, “here is something we wanted to explore but never got around to” and “alright, here is mashup of some of what we would have covered with more seasons before finding ending with the grand finale death”. After the first couple episodes of season six, sadly most fans probably were anxious counting the days before the relief the whole thing would be over.