Volume 7: Salinger the Documentary (Prime) • Mystery Road (Acorn TV) • Murder City (Prime)

My son Dan, his wife Melissa and their two kids finalized deal on their new house, here in St Catharines which happens to be within about 6 blocks of our house, which we are delighted about. They are migrating out of the big city to a smaller city, and are really quite excited to be coming this way.

On the rehab front. I have been Up on the walker again. Six lengths this time, and a little less of a mess than the first time. On Friday, I practiced turning and sitting in an armless a chair. Also went out and walker walked a 25 metre length of the hallway. In other words, a red letter day.

The Spud Rating System

NO SPUD 4U - Crap

ONE SPUD - OK Time Waster

TWO SPUDS - Worth Watching

Salinger (On Prime) (2 SPUDS)

Although JD Salinger’s seminal work, The Catcher In The Rye, was actually published in book form In the early 1950s, I never got around to reading it until about the mid 60s, when I was forming all kinds of ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Holden Caulfield, the book’s main character was one of the first anti-heroes I had encountered in literature and it was, for a 17 year old who loved to read and scribble down random thoughts, quite profoundly moving to realize that famous people were writing about a lot of the stuff I was thinking about.

So when I happened to notice a documentary about the author of one of the books that set me one the road to writing, I just gobbled it up.

One of the things that this documentary does is dispel the myth that Salinger went into complete seclusion after The Catcher In The Rye was published. In reality he simply moved to the country, and chose to spend most of his time there, burning through relationships and writing away. And as a result of whatever demons possessed his soul, he published much less work after that than his audience would have wished.

For some reason he also frequently advised the young writers he encountered to avoid publishing at all costs, which would have been a hard pill for many of them to swallow. But he believed firmly in the notion that writers should write for themselves. I guess the logic was that if you start writing to please whatever audience your work accumulates, that somehow adds an element of impurity to your work and makes it less than your pure best.

Fortunately for Salinger the success of The Catcher In The Rye, which to this day has been selling at least 400,000 copies a year, would have allowed him the luxury of being able to walk his no publishing talk with ease.

As a film, Salinger is quite a good exposition and explanation of a legendary and probably misunderstood literary figure. For those who were not somehow affected by The Catcher In The Rye or any of the few other novels and short story collections he did publish, it would probably of somewhat limited interest.

But then again one man’s limited interest is another man’s great discovery. For me it was the latter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger

Mystery Road (Acorn TV) (2 SPUDS)

For those of you who don’t know, Acorn is a very good British streaming service. We have seen a couple of outstanding series there including The Heart Guy and 800 Words, (both of which are Australian), which I guess could be classed as light dramas, but quite enjoyable to watch.

Mystery Road is another Aussie series. The first season consists of 6 episodes telling one whole story. The leads are a local police chief in the Australian outback, played by Judy Davis, and a detective, Aaron Pederson, assigned to help her with a disappearance case.

This is a very interesting (IMHO) study of the law enforcement system in Australia, which is something you don’t see all that often in series from down under.

The series consists of 6 full hour episodes, (with a second season in the works). and the story it tells turns out to be a pretty simple one, but one which unfolds in a complex way. In point of fact, there are actually two mysteries that get solved here and both or pretty much of equal importance.

This series has that scorched earth look and sparse feel that a lot of Aussie features have, mainly because the landscape out there in the outback is bleak but with a raw beauty that’s quite photogenic

The two leads are pretty much polar opposites in their approach, meaning soft and caring versus hard and ruthless. But these characters have a grudging respect for each other and manage to get through the cases without serious damage.

If you don’t have Acorn but do have Apple TV+ you can access Acorn from there. (Not sure about the $$$ involved). I’m a big fan of British and Aussie TV so Acorn is right up my street, so to speak. And Mystery Road is one of the better series I have seen there.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7298596/

Murder City On Prime (2 SPUDS)

Murder City is a Brit cop show in the tradition of delightfully complex mysteries that the English have been famous for for like forever.

It stars Amanda Donohoe and Kris Marshall as a pair of detectives in London who always seem to end up with real complex murder cases to solve. But that’s OK because the Kris Marshall character is one of those odd savant types who sees things very clearly from the bits of evidence that are left behind. The Amanda Donohoe character is his boss and is always seems to be trying to convince her boss, Tim Woodward, that the Kris character isn’t bonkers.

What I really like about this series (2 seasons from 2004-5) is the complexity of the plotting and the wit of the characters. This combination of elements makes the show extremely watchable.

Not sure why this series was cut off after just two seasons. Because it’s not your average cop show, even by British standards.

Good Viewing On Netflix & Prime

A friend of mine on Facebook was looking for some good stuff to watch on Netflix and Prime, so I made her a little list, which I am happy to share. They all come with a 2 SPUD rating, which is at the top of the rating scale.

Netflix: Occupied, Yankee, Surviving Escobar, Biohackers, Secret City, Grace & Frankie, Godless, Spotless

Prime: Bosch, The Marvellous Mrs Maisel, Goliath (from the beginning), Murder City, Zero, Zero, Zero, The Night Manager, Carnival Row, Justified, Good Omens, The Widow, The Looming Tower, Hanna, The Last Tycoon, The Capture, White Dragon, Mozart In The Jungle, Jack Ryan, Black Earth Rising.

Jim Murray is a writer, a reader, a sports fan and a TV watcher who has been writing about the sports & entertainment worlds since1998, when he created his first blog, The Couch Potato Chronicles, which he publishes regularly along with his political/marketing blog, Skinny Dipping In The Lava Flow, both of which are available on beBee.com

Jim is also a former ad agency writer and art director and ran his own creative consultancy, Onwords & Upwords, from 1989 until just recently when he closed and opened a freelance enterprise called Murmarketing.

He lives with his wife, Heather, in the beautiful Niagara area of Ontario and works with a small cadre of companies that are trying to make a difference in the world.

You can follow Jim

On beBee: https://www.bebee.com/@jim-murray

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