In the doldrums

The Doldrums are an actual place on the globe, where air can get really calm for periods of time, halting the progress of ships. After the frenetic activity of the past two weeks, I find myself in a kind of doldrums. I just don't want to do anything, including knitting.

Yesterday I realized that I haven't posted on any of our Netflix adventures recently. The Emperor and I have just finished watching the first season of Rome and have really enjoyed it. We're not much for watching other humans' private acts on the screen (and there's plenty of that in this series), but the story is so compelling that we just couldn't "put it down." One of things I really appreciate about the series is that everything is so colorful, and not like the ossified white marble version of Rome we get from books sometimes.

I think that one of the things that fascinates me about ancient Rome is that the people are like us, but they're living in an entirely different world. You can see elements of Roman culture in American life but it's still very alien. Fascinating.

We have also watched the first six seasons of Allo, Allo!, which is a British comedy set in World War II France. In it, a French cafe owner negotiates the thin line between survival and collaboration with the Nazis, and at the same time he's helping the Resistance hide British airmen and effect their escape. Later episodes are built on the foundation of earlier ones, and situations become more ridiculous as they progress. Everybody in the program is speaking English, but the French speak it with a "french" accent, the Germans with a "german" accent, and nobody understands the British no matter what they say. I haven't described this program very well; suffice to say that we couldn't wait for the next disc to arrive in the mail and are eagerly waiting for the last three seasons of the show to appear on DVD!