But how people deal with it can be subject to humour. Satire. Sarcasm. We need to be able to laugh about it every now and then, lest we go mad.

In that vein, I heartily recommend Don't Look Up - if you haven't seen it already, it's not exactly an insider tip.

I'm getting it now.

I've watched the trailer and got an acute attack of déjà vue. I'm sure you've all heard the Jehovah's Witness view of the future before, because we do our best to inform folks. I can so identify with those astronomers.

^ A small tip, don't give up halfway through, there's a plot twist which made the film even better for me.
I saw it as a very dark and very good Comedy/Satire.

While I'm at it, some reviews.

• Emily in Paris: In a nutshell it's a lot like the "Legally blonde" movies, but not as good. If you wouldn't enjoy another legally blonde in Paris, miss this.
• The Wire: Looks good, well reviewed. But when every sentence has an unsavoury 4 letter word that rhymes with "duck," I get turned off.
• The Blacklist. Interesting Twist: A major criminal turns himself in, and does a deal where he gets immunity for helping the FBI/CIA to get the other major criminals and facilitators. I'm half way through series 1, which says a lot.

It's not a movie, but I'm quite enjoying The Lost Pirate Kingdom on Netflix.

We've been discussing everything one can watch on here.
The trailer suggests some sort of heavily dramatised documentary with fictional elements?

Yes, many people say The Wire is one of the best US American crime/police shows ever.
I liked it very much for a while but then got turned off of it, sometime after Season 2. Unfortunately I don't remember why anymore.
What I do remember is a great soundtrack, amongst other things.
Personally I find the swearing only logical - if you show blood, violence and suffering in full detail, why should you skimp on that.

Another of my guilty pleasures (I do seem to have a few)!
If you manage to get over the cringy arrogance of the main character, it's an epic "FBI fairytale" - don't expect realism, but do expect all the yummy artificial ingredients of crime entertainment, with great plot twists. And I like the female lead.
I watched 3 full American (20+ episodes) seasons and I am going to watch more when the fancy hits me.

same here :

i have heard that it is one of best cop / crime series.
i watched couple seasons but i think i didnt finish watching it.

In a word, standards.

As I have seen, entertainment always pushes the standards. They don't go up - they go down. I don't want my thoughts shaped by what directors think they can get away with. "Gone with the wind" had the first swear word on film. The wire has it in every second sentence. I don't want to speak like that, which is what would happen.

I know strong language is much more acceptable to others, but that's my choice of what I consider entertaining. I won't watch all violence either, although I accept some.

Some of the recent stuff I've now had a chance to look at

The Blacklist I am enjoying. There's good scripting, some excellent acting, and the rest hangs together. It's about one master criminal shipping others in a plea bargain; but then the police have to find/catch them. I'm midway through Season 1, with intentions on series 2.

What not to watch:

Catastrophe (2015) is the title, and could be the review. In it's favour, it's stressless. There's no real plot, and no director, or else he dies. It helps to know that the female lead wrote the script. Either she was in Sex & the City, and it ended, or else she was just a wannabe, but it's in the same vein. It's a mixture of mature sounding dialogue by day and sexual heat by night. The many explicit scenes are terribly badly done. He may be at the 'male menopause' stage, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt on the female menopause, because An unplanned pregnancy prolongs a weekend romp. It's best watched while you're doing something else, if you're that sort of person. I am not. Even better - don't watch it.

Emily in Paris is the daily affairs of a ditsy blonde American type girl with no French at all transferred into a very French Paris. Chewing gum for the eyes. Maybe put it on in hospital wards during visiting time. Folks with no visitors can pretend they're watching it.

Inside Number 9 is set inside various houses whose house number is 9. It's apparently set in England. Each episode has nothing to do: with other episodes; with reality; with current events; with enternaining whoever watches it at any level. It was an experiment, and it failed. It could have been a Government work experience program for retarded out of work actors.

Glad you're enjoying The Blacklist!
It's great storytelling, despite its flaws.
____________

I'm beginning to understand where your tastes lie. You seem to have an aversion against certain types of typical British humour.
I started watching Season 1, and episode 1 really put me off - just like you describe.
Episode 2, however, I loved. Here's what I wrote about it:The rest of season 1 was, predictably, somewhere in between those two. I was entertained.
____________

I have to thank you for recommending Inspector George Gently. I gingerly started watching it, not at all convinced by the premise.
There's one major suspension of disbelief I had to deal with here, which is that a 21st century man is magically beamed into a 1960s police career. I'm not saying people weren't decent back then, but some of the ethics displayed by Mr Gently seem very much 2010s to me.
Once that is accepted, it's a great show. The whodunnit part of it is good enough, and the constant tension between the young brash provincial and the seasoned and refined Londoner is fascinating.
The show takes great care to show that the brash one has a good heart, and thus speaks out for a large part of the population - "class" I believe the British like to say.
Martin Shaw has an exquisite face I don't tire looking at, and Lee Ingleby's acting is outstanding.

Funny on George Gently. It's filmed earlier than you think, I'm sure. There's not that many period cars about any more. They are parked on every street in the series. You can't have lead characters smoking now, because smoking kills you. Likewise, police violence during questioning is unacceptable today. It's an adaptation of books typical of BBC/ITV in the 1970s, where the book was the screenplay. The books were contemporaneous. Little things like a car pulling up and the camera lingering on the number plate were so typical of the time. They started with letters after the reg nationwise in 1963, and suddenly you could tell how old a car was!

Britain reeks of class. It's steeped in it. George Gently is in a working/middle class type job with a well educated (posh but not really posh) accent, excellent manners, and super tough. He's the sort of guy everybody wants to be: he smokes but never coughs; he drinks like a fish but never gets drunk, or blows a breathalyser; he is sensitive of women's feelings, stands up to his boss and gets away with it, is fighting fit but rarely trains. All the women fancy him. Yes, many of his ethics seem 21st century, but those things were current enough back then. Germaine Greer's 'Female Eunuch' (1970) made big waves here but it was being talked about a lot even before that. (Ex-President) Mary Robinson was in politics here and was a big campaigner here at the time.

I had just seen "A quiet night in" when I wrote on "Inside No. 9", and I saw it as B-grade mime. I wasn't in the humour for mime, and still hadn't forgiven them for episode 1.
.

According to IMDB, 2007-2017.
Considering I'm at Season 6 now (2014), I am totally correct.

Yes it seems they went to some great effort there; but you can often see that these are not new anymore, just well restored. Same with some buildings (e.g. typical late 60s blocks of flats that were brand new then).
But that doesn't matter to me.

I was wondering about that.
I think they could do it that way because the whole show's message is "that was back then".
Frankly I find the smoking refreshing, for wont of a better word. Like watching an old Western ;)

Seriously. Sometimes I think their classism is worse than their racism (not saying Brits as a whole are particularly racist, but then they aren't particularly non-racist either).

Yes, but that face, and his particular brand of grumpiness!

Current enough to be the hero in a mainstream event like a TV show?
I don't think so; but I cannot be sure.
No, to me it smells of trying to improve something that has irrevocably passed.
One would have to read the books I guess.

Now that you mention it, it's true.

The British are or were very industrious about their hobbies - house, gardens, cars, etc. Many worked in the various car companies which all became British Leyland and collected & restored the models they worked on. A telling sign of restored cars is that there's no crashes, no tyre screeching, etc. It would probably be easy enough to assemble a 1960s collection from vintage clubs.

I just took a look in series 6 episode 1. Gently has this "two year old" Rover 2000, (going by the reg plate), but the leaf spring rear suspension had lowered itself noticably - something that typically takes over 8 years minimum and over 10 years usually. Gently's Rover in S06E01 and the Wolsely Police car have the rear ends down. You'll notice the difference at the wheel arches.The space between the tyre & wheel arch should be the same fromt & rear. The fronts are original height (up slightly, because the back is down), but the backs have gone well down. The exhaust pipes all should be parallel to the road, but they're not. Those leaf springs haven't been manufactured for 40-ish years. Reconditioning is difficult to impossible.

Watching on Roku TV. Star Wars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97uKFYrx-_0&t=447s

The Window
 

My eleven-year-old son and I just enjoyed a beautiful film, "The Window," which we finished a couple of hours ago: now he's outside painting a picture of a nearby river!