Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
Failure without cruelty. A boy who keeps his word. For a house.
Charlie Brown's disasters are public and his kindness is private, which is the right ratio. He will not take a prize he did not earn. The film thinks that is the point, and it is. Snoopy's air battle is a daydream, clearly marked as one, so the fantasy does not eat the schoolyard.
There is no villain but embarrassment. A house that is tired of stories where the awkward child must become cruel to survive can put this on without a speech afterward. The speech is already in it. He returns the test. He dances badly. He is still Charlie Brown.
Industry
7/10
He studies, he practices the dance, he does the assignment. The work is the joke and the honor.
Household
8/10
Siblings, a dog, a neighborhood of children. No one is abandoned for a punchline.
Piety
4/10
No creed is named. Decency is practiced as if it were one.
Courage
8/10
The brave act is handing back a score that is not his.
Republic
7/10
A small town of children with rules, and a boy who keeps them when it costs first place.
Temperance
8/10
Wanting the girl does not license a lie.
Truth
9/10
The returned test is the whole moral.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands a child a picture of losing well.
Live historicallyPraise one child for finishing a hard thing badly and honestly, not for winning it.
Competence in the service of a town. The manners are bad. The work is not.
Martin Ellingham is almost a warning and almost a model, which is why the show lasts. He can do the one thing the village cannot do for itself, and he is bad at every other human exchange. The standard does not grade bedside charm above a correct diagnosis. It does notice when a man has to be dragged into his own household.
Watch it for the work and for the slow argument that a town is allowed to need you and also to correct you. Skip the half hours that are only a joke about his face. Stay for the ones where he chooses the patient, or the boy, over being left alone.
Industry
9/10
He is a doctor who still knows the job. The village is healthier because he will not fake a diagnosis.
Household
7/10
A marriage, a son, and a house he did not ask for and cannot decently abandon.
Piety
4/10
Conscience is there. Reverence is thin. Blood is a fact to him, a soul less so.
Courage
6/10
He tells a hard truth in a room that wanted comfort. That costs him friends.
Republic
8/10
Portwenn is a town with a school, a plumber, a constable, and one man they all have to trust.
Temperance
7/10
His rudeness is not the lesson. The lesson is that skill without a neighbor is a smaller life.
Truth
8/10
He will not tell a patient a pleasing lie. The show is on his side when he refuses.
Stewardship
6/10
A son arrives, and the question becomes what kind of father a precise man can be.
Live historicallyUse a skill you actually have for someone in your town this week, and let them tell you how you did it.
A small town, a patient cop, and neighbors who are not extras. A decent evening, then the talk.
Mike Shepherd wanted a quieter life and got a community instead, which is the better bargain. The cases are the hook. The thing worth keeping is the scale: a vineyard, a club, a church hall, people whose names recur. A republic starts at that size. A story that remembers it is already ahead of most crime television.
It will not raise a child by itself, and some hours are only clever. Watch it when you want a mystery that still believes a neighbor is a real person. Then learn one fact about your own street that you have been content to guess.
Industry
7/10
Police work is shown as interviews and shoe leather, not as a brand.
Household
6/10
Home is the town more than a marriage. People still cook and bury their own.
Piety
5/10
The dead are treated with some respect. A creed is mostly implied.
Courage
6/10
He takes an unglamorous post and does not perform it.
Republic
8/10
Brokenwood is small enough that a lie has to survive the person next door.
Temperance
7/10
The murders are puzzles. They are not a lesson in cruelty.
Truth
8/10
The pleasure of it is a fact coming out in a place where gossip got there first.
Stewardship
6/10
A town that solves its dead is a town that still thinks the living owe each other something.
Live historicallyLearn the name and the work of one neighbor you have only waved at. Use the name the next time you see them.
Keep it. Competence, calm, and a square peg of a problem. One of the best pictures of work we have.
Lovell wants the moon and gets a problem instead. The film's heroism is not a speech on the lawn. It is a CO2 canister, a trajectory, a wife who is not given a false comfort, a crew that does not waste air on panic. Failure is not a metaphor. It is a set of constraints. They respect the constraints and the men come home. A country watching is the public part, and it is not tacky. People should care whether the strangers in the capsule live.
Watch it with a young person who thinks heroism is a feeling. Then look at the table of parts and say: this is what it looked like.
Industry
10/10
Engineering under a clock.
Household
7/10
The families on the ground are not extras.
Piety
4/10
Awe at the work. Little religious language, a real gravity.
Courage
8/10
Calm nerve.
Republic
8/10
A public effort that tells the truth about the failure.
Temperance
8/10
Panic refused.
Truth
9/10
They say it is broken.
Stewardship
9/10
It hands on a respect for skill in the service of bringing people back.
Live historicallyWhen something breaks, gather the people who know the machine and tell them the truth.
A serious attempt to show Jesus among working people. It invents scenes. It does not invent the claim.
Most screen Jesus is either a poster or a scandal. This one eats with people who have jobs, and the jobs matter. The writers add conversations the Gospels do not record. A house should know that, the way it knows a illustrated children's Bible is not the text.
Watch it as a way into the text, then open the text. The show is the porch, not the room.
Industry
8/10
Fishermen, tax collectors, a tent-maker's world. Work is visible.
Household
7/10
Homes, dinners, a mother, a wedding. The ministry interrupts real tables.
Piety
9/10
The subject is worship, and the show is not embarrassed.
Courage
7/10
Following costs a boat, a post, a reputation.
Republic
5/10
Rome is occupied fact. The politics stay smaller than the person.
Temperance
7/10
It is willing to be slow. That is a discipline.
Truth
7/10
The words of Jesus are mostly the words. The added scenes should be labeled as added.
Stewardship
8/10
It is made to be watched with children and again in twenty years.
Live historicallyAfter an episode, read the chapter it came from. If the show added a scene, say so.
Keep it. Remember the dead by name. Ambition that erases a family is the villain.
Miguel's hunger for a song is not the sin. The sin, in the story he uncovers, is leaving a child for a stage and letting the story be rewritten. The film's afterlife is folk theology, brightly made, and a house that believes differently should say what it believes rather than panic at the marigolds. The usable truth does not depend on the metaphysics. The dead are kept by memory that is specific. A picture on an ofrenda is not a brand. It is a person.
Watch it, and let the last song be about the great-grandmother, not about fame. If a child only wants the skeleton, you have not finished the movie.
Industry
7/10
Shoemaking is honored. Music is work too.
Household
9/10
The whole plot is a family remembering.
Piety
6/10
An honor of the dead that a Christian house can respect and also locate.
Courage
7/10
He risks the crossing for a name.
Republic
5/10
A family ban is a kind of law, and it is revised by the truth.
Temperance
6/10
Fame is refused as the highest good.
Truth
9/10
The hidden crime is a theft of memory and of songs.
Stewardship
9/10
It hands on the duty to say their names.
Live historicallySay the full name of one person your house does not talk about, kindly.
Responsibility still the thesis. Judge it by whether the aunt and the block stay real.
Another telling of the boy who cannot leave a smaller person in trouble. The neighborhood is the right word for it: not a universe, a few blocks, a school, the people who notice he is tired. When the series stays there, it is doing the Spider-Man work, which is one of the few superhero works this desk respects. When it becomes a prelude to a larger war, it is a commercial.
Older children. Watch the hours about the promise to the dead and the living. A power that does not cash out as a kept promise is only a stunt.
Industry
6/10
School and a double life. The ordinary work is what he keeps failing and returning to.
Household
6/10
An aunt, friends, a block. The house is the reason the mask is heavy.
Piety
3/10
A vow, not a church.
Courage
8/10
He goes toward the person screaming.
Republic
6/10
A neighborhood is the republic at the size he can actually serve.
Temperance
6/10
The temptation is to be admired. The correction is to be on time.
Truth
7/10
Great power, great responsibility — the line is still true if the show does not wink.
Stewardship
7/10
A boy learning he owes the next person on the sidewalk.
Live historicallyHave a teenager name one person who is worse off if they do not show up, and show up.
A craft, a village, and a lighter case. Pleasant. Do not ask it to be more than that.
Jean White comes to France to settle a death and stays because a village will have her. The cases are cozy, which means the danger is arranged to be survivable and the jokes arrive on time. That is a limitation, not a scandal. A story can be small and still be about work and neighbors.
Do not confuse it with All Creatures or with a serious detective. Watch it on a tired night when you want a town that still eats together. Then put one real object in your house back where it belongs, or give it to the person it was actually for.
Industry
7/10
She knows objects: what they are, what they are worth, and when a story about them is a lie.
Household
6/10
Widowhood is the start. The village slowly becomes the house she did not plan.
Piety
4/10
Kindness stands in for piety. It is real kindness, and it is not a faith.
Courage
6/10
She asks questions a polite guest would leave alone.
Republic
7/10
A small town with a mayor, a neighbor, and a café is still a community with duties.
Temperance
7/10
The mysteries are mild. Nobody is being trained to enjoy a cruelty.
Truth
6/10
An antique with a false provenance is a small lesson in truth. Some hours forget the lesson.
Stewardship
5/10
She is building a life in a place. Posterity is a hope, not the plot.
Live historicallyReturn one borrowed thing, or give away one object you are keeping out of habit. Tell the person why.
A real family, a devout mother, a father who goes to work. The laugh is sometimes at them. The love is not.
The joke of the premise is that a brilliant child is hard to live with. The surprise, if you only know the later sitcom, is that this one loves the people who live with him. George goes to work. Mary prays and is not treated as an idiot for it, even when the writers want the laugh. Missy and the grandmother keep the house from becoming a shrine to the prodigy.
Good for the family past the youngest years. Some episodes aim a joke at church or at a parent's body that you can skip without losing the story. Keep the ones where the boy has to apologize.
Industry
7/10
A coach, a cafeteria, a factory of ordinary days. The genius still has to be a son.
Household
8/10
Marriage under strain, and they stay. A grandmother, twins, a baby. The table is crowded on purpose.
Piety
7/10
Mary's faith is not a costume. The show argues with it and does not only sneer.
Courage
5/10
The brave acts are small: a father backing a strange child, a boy telling the truth in a church that wanted quiet.
Republic
6/10
A Texas town with a church, a school, and a football field that is the local senate.
Temperance
7/10
The excess is verbal. The home is not a party.
Truth
7/10
Sheldon is factually right and often humanly wrong, and the show usually knows the difference.
Stewardship
7/10
An odd child is being carried by people who will not be famous for it.
Live historicallyLet the odd child in your house be corrected once, kindly, and also defended in public.
Work, a code, a daughter, a city. Adult television in the old sense.
Harry Bosch's line, borrowed from the novels, is that everybody counts or nobody does. That is a republican sentence hiding inside a cop show. He works. He is difficult in the way craftsmen are difficult. He has a daughter, which keeps him from being another lone weapon with a badge.
It is still a procedural, with the procedural's faith that the right man in the right job can hold a city together. That faith is incomplete and it is better than the alternative on offer, which is that the job is a joke. Watch it if you want to remember what competence in the service of a neighbor looks like when nobody is going to clap.
Industry
9/10
The job is the character. He is useful, and he stays useful.
Household
6/10
A daughter, an imperfect house, and a man trying not to vanish from it.
Piety
4/10
The code is secular and stern. It functions like a conscience.
Courage
7/10
He will ruin his career before he will drop a victim.
Republic
7/10
The city is a real place with politics, not a backdrop.
Temperance
6/10
Dark, not debauched. The case is the appetite.
Truth
8/10
Everybody lies. He is angry about it for professional reasons.
Stewardship
6/10
Leaving a city slightly more honest is the inheritance.
Live historicallyDo the unglamorous part of your job all the way to the end today. No audience required.
