Patience Season 1, (PBS/BBC, 2025)

Patience season 1 posterI saw a quick blurb about this show and thought it would be a good one for my wife and I to watch together.  With a six-episode first season it felt like there was an overall arc plotted for at least the two main characters.

It’s a really good thing to see our autistic hero (Patience) as a full human being.  It’s a sign of the quality that we watched the entire season over the course of a week where the latest Doctor Who took us months to even get started past the second episode.  The show is already filming a second season.  If you like your crime solving full of deductive leaps, you’ll enjoy Patience.

Doctor Who Season 2 (Disney+, 2025)

Doctor Who Season 2 Disney+I have enjoyed seeing Ncuti Gatwa as the 15th-ish Doctor, but as an honest reviewer I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed his overall arc.  He plays the Doctor as a little -too- emotional, even a bit much with vulnerability.  I think the Doctor is hitting some of the same problems the Superman has encountered over his 87-year existence.  How do you make the stories about a god interesting after all this time?  Part of that is the Companion’s-eye-view of the adventures.  This season there’s been an overarching “get her home on time” refrain, which really didn’t even pay off until the next-to-last episode.  All in all, I’d call this Doctor a very uneven telling.

A Man on the Inside Season 1 (Netflix, 2024)

Poster for A Man on the InsideI admit that I came late to the party for this series.  I am getting to the point in my life where I appreciate a series that can talk about the problems we encounter as we confront growing older.  It’s also really nice to watch a comedy with simple interactions that can resonate.

I remember watching Friends when it first aired and thinking that having the Friends just want to stay at home and put their feet up instead of going out to a bar sounded pretty true for our age group. And now here I am commiserating with a recent widower with time on his hands. (The time part, my wife is fine, thank you very much.)

The series makes you care about the residents of a senior-living apartment house and Ted Danson’s arc as the widower.  This is the coziest of mystery series and that suits me just fine!  There’s going to a be a season two, and that will make it to my Watch List as well–and be watched a lot faster!