Series · Prime Video · 1965

Hogan's Heroes

Competence against a real enemy, played as a sitcom. The sitcom is the problem and the pleasure.

The show is funny because the prisoners are capable and the commandant is vain. Those are allowable comic facts. It is not an allowable picture of the camps if it is the only one a person has. Laugh at Klink if you already know what the war was. If you do not, this is the wrong first teacher.

The eight

Industry
7/10
Tunnels, radios, a plan. The work of resistance is the joke's machinery.
Household
4/10
A unit that functions as a household.
Piety
2/10
The evil is too foolish to fear, which is a distortion.
Courage
6/10
They risk the camp every episode.
Republic
5/10
A chain of command that still holds in a camp.
Temperance
5/10
Light, on a subject that was not.
Truth
4/10
The incompetence of the enemy is the fiction. The existence of the resistance is not.
Stewardship
4/10
It kept a memory, in a form that cannot be the only memory.

Live historicallyPair it, if you watch it, with a sober account. A Small Light is on this same row.

Series · Prime Video · 2024

Batman: Caped Crusader

A vigilante who is at least solemn about it. Still a man who replaced the courts.

This is Batman for people tired of the joke version. The art is serious and the cases have a shape. The old objection stands: a good city needs detectives who testify, not an heir in a mask. Watch it as a noir, not as a civics lesson.

The eight

Industry
6/10
Detection and a city of working crooks. The craft is the pleasure.
Household
3/10
No family. Alfred is a staff.
Piety
3/10
A private vow, sternly kept.
Courage
6/10
He goes out. The city is not saved by a speech.
Republic
3/10
The police are corrupt or secondary. He remains the exception.
Temperance
6/10
It refuses the joke. That restraint is the improvement.
Truth
6/10
Crime has causes and culprits. Both are allowed.
Stewardship
4/10
A city he will not join except through a mask.

Live historicallyIf you admire the detective, admire the part that can stand up in court.