This article originally appeared in Jerry Saltz’s Favorite Things , a new limited-run, subscriber-only newsletter in which our chief art critic writes about the cultural products that have shaped his perspective. To read the full series, click here to sign up for the newsletter. I have a large, crappy flat-screen television.
We’ve owned it for more than a quarter-century. I watched the planes smash into the World Trade Center on it. It sits on a rolling library table that has never been rolled.
My wife and I are both in our 70s. Each of us has a large desktop computer, so neither of us has ever watched a movie on a laptop. Everything we’re capable of tech-wise, I taught myself to do.
Which is next to nothing. Roberta, my wife, is unable even to turn on the TV. She barely watches it anyway.
I’m the only one who still watches. I will watch for no more than two hours a day. I figured out how to get Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and a few other streaming services.
Scrolling through all the selections and categories is so time-consuming and exhausting, and I only really want to watch documentaries. I have watched maybe 30 of them and now can’t find any others. We try to get ourselves addicted to fictional shows.
But finding them is boring and it’s a real commitment. I love dress-up costume shows, but most of them are shite. Below is a list of shows that I secretly love and record and watch five or six episodes in a row of, alone.
You’ll see my taste is pretty.
