What We're Watching, Vol. 9

At The Attic on Eighth, we are clearly a multimedia bunch, with our regular reading discussions and film lists. In fact, some of our very first interactions as friends were excitedly messaging scene for scene reactions to shared shows across oceans and time zones. In this monthly series we gather to chat our most recent views. Nothing keeps us close like binge-watching together, even if we’re not in the same room.

As we head into a new year, media can suddenly approach us from all sides. Moreso even than the hectic holiday special and streaming schedule, we are suddenly presented with returning shows, new seasons, and the oncoming rush to catch up on every missed film with awards season just around the corner. Still, we keep our sights on the things that truly pique our imaginations, and settle down with all things comfortable and a good January watch.

Here’s what we’re watching this month:

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Corinne Elicona

January is the “hunkering” down season for me. I eat dinner way too early, grab my cup of tea (or if I’m feeling festive, make myself a martini), and snuggle under my weighted blanket on the couch to watch something wintery. This month I’ve started the anthology series, The Terror. Specifically, the first season about the expedition to discover the Northwest Passage in 1845. Long lauded as one of the most historically accurate mini series, (except for one MINOR detail [fans of the show will know what I’m talking about]) The Terror details the expedition of two british naval ships, The Erebus and The Terror as they make their way to the North Pole to find a shorter route to the East. If you’re looking for an inhospitable arctic survival epic, I can certainly recommend The Terror to you. Also known as Franklin’s Lost Expedition (after the captain Sir John Franklin), the Erebus and the Terror vanished after passing Baffin Bay and entering the dangerous ice fields surrounding the North Pole. Both ships hadn’t been found until 2016. Now it is our unfortunate opportunity to have a clearer picture of how these men suffered to survive, until ultimately abandoning ship to walk 200 miles across the arctic tundra to the nearest shipping port. 

Caitlin Carroll

I’m not a great TV binger. It takes something special to hold my wavering attention span, but Netflix’s Lost in Space has done it. Despite its eerie title, it’s a fun space adventure about the Robinson family, who join a space colony as Earth grows more and more uninhabitable. It’s also a reboot of the 1965 show of the same name, which is an adaptation of the classic The Swiss Family Robinson. So… a reboot of a reboot. However, before you let that dampen your excitement, let me gush about the wholesome, adventurous fun. Moving back and forth in time, from their complicated past on Earth to their current predicament in space, you see the long-term fissures created in a family struggling to stay together even when they’re not stranded on a foreign planet. In addition to that, I’ve been savoring the final season of Schitt’s Creek, a sitcom about another family stranded in a difficult place, but this show has more wigs and mid-Atlantic accents. For the few who haven’t experienced this delightful show yet, it’s about a wealthy bunch of socialites who are forced to move to rural Schitt’s Creek when their finances implode. This might be the best sitcom I’ve ever watched, absurd but always heartfelt.

Zoë G. Burnett

The holidays are over and I’m tired. Thought it was a hangover, but no. I’m just exhausted. My social calendar for the month was promptly filled within the first two days, but not before I built in some time to party with the Criterion Channel. No one is invited but me. Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I finally watched Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage. The television series, not the film. Like most essential art house screenings I’ve put off for reasons, SFAM jabbed me in the feelings that I pretend not to possess. 2020 has already pushed me into my core defense posture of complete nihilism, and for once, I’m leaning in. Next on my queue is Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), and The Silence (1963). It’s Bleak Bergman Midwinter, babes. 

Olivia Gündüz-Willemin

Like everyone, January has been about snuggling up with every pillow and blanket I own and hunkering down. I’ve spent most of the past three weeks dealing with a seemingly unending onslaught of illness, and as such, Netflix has reclaimed its spot as one of my best friends. I rewatched a lot of romantic comedies, checked out a few questionable titles in my queue, and got back into the so-bad-it’s-good Riverdale. The highlight for me though was the most recent (and unfortunately, final) season of the Anne of Green Gables adaptation, Anne with an E. I’ve written about my feelings about the show in the past – first with hesitation, then with affection – and I’m happy to say this third season felt perfect. Just as the show is more in check with the world today, the storylines felt easier to get along with as the characters got older and finally hit adulthood. The irony of loving Anne of Green Gables but favoring the later books in the series is that every time an adaptation comes along, you go along with the younger years of it, waiting for the characters to age and your favorite storylines to come around… and then it ends just when it starts to get good. What I wouldn’t do to see an intelligent, updated take on Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe as university students and adults. Moira Walley-Beckett would have been the one to do it. 

Raquel Reyes

January has been an undeniably weird one already, and for many reasons getting out of my own head for a while with something light and carefree has been a welcome respite. After its release on Christmas Eve, my brother and I proceeded to watch John Mulaney’s new special John Mulaney and The Sack Lunch Bunch at least once a day for the rest of 2019 and the entire first week of January. When not watching, we’ve been quoting or singing lyrics at each other, and even playing the soundtrack on Spotify while doing house chores in the background. It’s a zany, joyous celebration of life but also the neuroses of adulthood in a way that feels just a little less panicked than the rest of the world these days, and I’m sure it’ll be a classic. Following that, I’ve been catching up on Single Parents, a woefully underrated sitcom, now that it's returned from its holiday hiatus. Following a group of single parents that have nothing in common save for their children’s class schedule, it presents a quirky take on the unconventional friend group trope, with not only the parents forming serious bonds (despite vast age and personality differences) through the adventures of parenthood, but the children as well becoming an endearing makeshift family and offering all sorts of comedic relief along the way.

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