Series · Prime Video · 1992

Dateline

It takes a real death seriously. It also makes a season out of real deaths.

A single long account of a case can teach a house how a lie fails: the time, the receipt, the person who noticed. A diet of them teaches that ordinary marriage is a murder waiting for a narrator. Watch one when you have a reason. Do not let it become the way you fall asleep.

The eight

Industry
4/10
Investigators and reporters do a job. The job is other people's ruin.
Household
3/10
The household is the crime scene, over and over.
Piety
2/10
Judgment is legal, not moral, and sometimes not even that.
Courage
3/10
The courage belongs to the detective and the friend who would not let it go.
Republic
4/10
Courts, police, a local record. Institutions appear as themselves.
Temperance
3/10
One case could be gravity. A queue of them is an appetite.
Truth
6/10
Facts, timelines, a lie that does not match the clock.
Stewardship
2/10
The dead do not get their evening back. The viewer gets another episode.

Live historicallyIf you want a true story tonight, choose one that is not a corpse.

Series · Prime Video · 2004

Desperate Housewives

Friendship is real. So is the affair, and the show cannot quit the affair.

Wisteria Lane is a picture of women who keep each other and do not keep their promises. The keeping of the friend is the part that feels like a life. The discarding of the vow is the part the commercials were cut around. You can see both. Do not pretend you came for the friendship if you came for the affair.

The eight

Industry
4/10
Some of them work. The street is the career for the rest.
Household
4/10
Children and husbands exist. They are often the obstacle to the plot.
Piety
2/10
A narrating dead woman instead of a judgment.
Courage
4/10
They will do a hard thing for a friend. They will also do a selfish one for a thrill.
Republic
4/10
A street where people still know each other's business. That cuts both ways.
Temperance
2/10
The secret romance is the ration.
Truth
4/10
It enjoys the reveal and then replaces the secret with a new one.
Stewardship
3/10
The children grow up inside the gossip.

Live historicallyIf a friendship in your life runs on someone else's marriage, step back from it.