I’ve been fizzling on some of my favorite TV series lately. I hope it’s temporary and eventually something pulls me back into the storylines, but for now, I’m avoiding them and trying new shows to find something HH and I like.

We liked Longmire for a few seasons, but the angst lately is getting to us. Too Much Angst. I know the advice is to always pile on the conflict, to have one problem after another and if you can add internal conflict on top of that, so much the better. I feel buried under an avalanche of troubles. Maybe if just one person at a time had to struggle with something, it wouldn’t be so bad. But EVERY single person is struggling with something. I can’t take it. I’m MIA.

On the flip side, HH and I enjoyed watching Shakespeare and Hathaway, but some of the shows we’ve watched recently have gotten so frivolous, we’ve turned that off, too. And then there’s Doc Martin. In the beginning, we loved it. Yes, the doc was eccentric to the extreme, but there were scenes that showed his soft side, his caring. Not so much lately. Louisa has had his baby, and all he does is complain about the inconvenience of losing sleep and how much the baby’s crying interferes with his office hours. Ugh. I hope to try him again later, but at the moment, I just want to shake him and tell him to grow up!

In the meantime, we’ve found the Dr. Blake mysteries that take place in Australia, and we’re enjoying those. We found McDonald and Dodds, too, with the sly dynamics of a ambitious detective who wants to get ahead teamed with a partner who first comes off as a bumbler, but is actually a genius. Fun so far.

When I watch TV, it makes me think about book series and writing. What works, what doesn’t. And I know everything is personal, but it’s easy to watch shows and decide what I like about them and what I don’t. It’s easy to see someone else’s mistakes, isn’t it? Not so easy to see our own. So, I’ll keep my fingers crossed and try to find a middle ground with more balance. Problems, but not too many of them. Humor but nothing too forced or far-fetched. And a protagonist I want to hang around with.

And maybe in winter, when the doldrums set in, I’ll be ready to return to the series that I enjoyed for quite a while. Maybe they’ll entertain me again.