Series · Prime Video · 2015

The Enfield Haunting

A frightened girl in a poor house. Believe the distress before you believe the ghost.

Enfield, 1977: a house that knocks, a voice that is not Janet's, and a mother who cannot get anyone official to treat her as a parent instead of a case. The series is short and it keeps the council-house facts in the frame.

Watch it as a question about a child, not as a tour of a haunting. If the voice is more interesting to you than Janet, turn it off.

The eight

Industry
4/10
The mother is keeping a rented house on very little. That labor is visible.
Household
7/10
The subject is a family with no man in it and a girl who is not safe.
Piety
3/10
The dead are the explanation on offer. Prayer is not.
Courage
5/10
Janet endures being the exhibit. The mother stays.
Republic
4/10
A street, a school, investigators. The public is a pressure.
Temperance
5/10
Three nights, not a franchise. It does not stretch the fear into a brand.
Truth
6/10
It allows that a poltergeist can be a girl in trouble and a story at the same time.
Stewardship
5/10
What matters is whether the child is left with the men and their theory.

Live historicallyWhen a child in your care starts performing a crisis, ask what the crisis is for. Then stay.

Series · Prime Video · 2005

Bones

Work and, eventually, a marriage. The bodies are the price of entry.

Temperance Brennan is great at a hard job and bad at people, and the series lets the job stay great while she learns the people. That is a better arc than House, because it does not bless the coldness. The cost is the weekly corpse. If you can keep the corpse from becoming your comfort watch, the partnership is a fair story.

The eight

Industry
7/10
The lab is a real craft, respected.
Household
6/10
They end as a family. The show is patient about it.
Piety
2/10
She begins without a creed. The partner and the child complicate that.
Courage
5/10
They stay with the dead until the dead have a name.
Republic
4/10
The Bureau and the lab. Institutions that function.
Temperance
4/10
A murder a week is still a diet.
Truth
6/10
The unnamed body is given back a story. That is the decent core.
Stewardship
5/10
A child arrives, and the work has to make room.

Live historicallyDo your work carefully enough that a stranger would be glad you were the one who touched it.