Lockdown recommendations

My last blog back in January started with a reflection that the previous year had been a bit shit. In light of the last few months, I apologise to 2019. It’s been a weird time, during which we’ve all streamed a lot of stuff — here’s a slice of what I can recommend.

Listening to the radio

Working from home, conversations become less of a continuous chatter and more a series of discrete events. With those extended and predictable gaps, I’ve spent a lot more time listening to music while I work.

In normal circumstances, I’d lean heavily on Spotify — why waste time listening to anything other than exactly what I want to? But during lockdown, life has slowed down, and we’ve all got a bit more used to letting go of things outside our control.

Whatever the causes, I’ve founded myself listening to the radio a lot more, specifically BBC 6 Music. I can set it and forget it, not having to choose the day’s soundtrack. The human curation doesn’t get stuck in the same feedback loops as recommendation algorithms, throwing you a delightful curveball more often. And without the office chatter, that human presence and conversation between songs is welcome addition rather than a time wasting intrusion, with the changing voices through the day keeping you gently attuned to the passing time.

Sure, when something gets on heavy rotation it can drive you slightly mad, but even that brings a sense of cosy familiarity. Radio — still good, imo.

Devs

If you haven’t watched the last couple of films from writer/director Alex Garland, Ex Machina and Annihilation, you can go watch them now — I’ll wait for you to get back.

Devs marks Garland’s move into TV, in the form of 8 episodes of ~50mins. It feels at times as though there’s only a film’s worth of plot spread across the series, but that extra breathing room is its greatest strength. Lingering establishing shots, soundtracked by a mix of an unsettling contemporary score and expertly chosen licensed tracks, do a great job of evoking moods of paranoia, nostalgia, and religious fervour. At times it feels more like an art piece than a drama/thriller, and the languid pace matches both the rhythm of lockdown life and the philosophical themes which emerge as the series progresses.

You can catch it on iPlayer for at least the next year.

Star Trek

(This one isn’t really specifically a lockdown recommendation — I started a watch through of all the more modern (The Next Generation onwards) Trek a while back, and I’m currently up to where Deep Space 9 and Voyager are running in parallel)

My final recommendation for today is Star Trek — or at least, something like Star Trek. For me, it ticks a few boxes:

• A pretty low-effort watch — not too convoluted or hyperactive; I can keep up with what’s going on even if I’m cooking/scrolling twitter/pre-occupied with the ongoing global pandemic!
• Episodic — there’s a few longer-running plot threads, especially in later installments in the franchise, but generally each episode is pretty self-contained. There’s no constant twists and cliffhangers to keep you binging; this is TV from an era when you watched what was on and you waited a week for the next episode. Counter-intuitively, I think it’s this property which leads me to watch more of it — I’m only ever committing to the next 45 minutes, which makes it easy to start. This is a show that feels much more comfortable in its own skin, a lot more relaxed about being weird, having an episode just spending time with the characters rather than Advancing The Plot. Speaking of which…
• There are some wonderful characters, a lot of them just incredibly wholesome. These are people you’ll happily spend dozens of hours following the adventures of. And while there are some serious themes, the tone is generally pretty light — this is cosy comfort viewing, in the best way.

It’s really nice having an old friend of a show like this to default to, with a huge supply of episodes. For you, maybe that’s Buffy, Friends, Gilmore Girls, Cheers, The Good Wife, or something else. There’s around 170 episodes each of TNG, DS9 and Voyager, before you even get to the original Star Trek, or more recent series. Let’s face it, you’ve got the time…