Five intelligent TV series to stream this summer

“You haven’t been writing much on your blog lately,” a friend observed the other day. “How come?”

It would have been nice to be able to reply I’ve been spending my summer working on a cure for cancer or building Habitat for Humanity houses but the truth is, I’ve been watching TV. Lots and lots of TV.  

In the olden days, you had to go to the movies if you wanted intelligent entertainment but Hollywood for some unfathomable reason no longer gives a rat’s ass about anyone over the age of 12.  Happily, directors worldwide have jumped in to fill that void and are producing some amazing TV series. Thanks to streaming video, you no longer have to wait a week to catch the next episode of any series that catches your fancy. You can watch follow-up episodes immediately, one after the other, without commercial interruption. And the next night you can do it again, until you’ve seen every episode from every season. It’s a more satisfying and infinitely more intelligent way to watch TV.

Here are some of the series my wife and I have binge-watched this summer. If you’re over 12 in terms of age or IQ, I’m betting you will enjoy them, too.

The Americans

3 seasons, 39 one-hour episodes, originally appeared on FX

It is early ‘80s. Reagan has just taken office, vowing to bring down the evil empire that is the Soviet Union. Across the Potomac in suburban Virginia live Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings, an attractive couple who run a successful travel agency and are the parents of two perfect children. The all-American family, right?  Hardly.

Phillip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) are KGB agents, native Russians  trained to speak unaccented English, who have infiltrated America, tasked with uncovering our country’s deepest, darkest secrets including plans for the stealth bomber and nuclear submarines, as well as details about America’s role in training the insurgents who are fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

The art direction – vintage cars, harvest gold-colored appliances and furnishings in the homes, the clothes, wigs and eyeglasses the Jennings’ don to disguise themselves as they gallivant around Washington doing their thing – is superb. So is the background music comprised mostly of hits from the ‘80s. (The opening chase scene is set to Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk.) The scripts are equally inspired, a combination of intrigue, humor, irony and poignancy.

Though they are ostensibly married, Phillip and Elizabeth Philip have never been in love – theirs was a match made in Moscow. Tentatively, they are realizing they actually do care for each other. And while Phillip is beginning to appreciate some of the good things about America, Elizabeth is tougher, a woman who can watch a man being doused with gasoline and burned alive, then return home to make a lasagna for the kids.

Having come of age in paranoid post-WWII Russia, the Jennings’ are doing their best to make sense of America’s political landscape. For instance, on the day Reagan is shot, the day Secretary of State Alexander Haig famously declared he was in charge in the absence of Vice President Bush, Elizabeth is convinced a coup is underway until Phillip makes her realize Haig means only to reassure the public that everything is under control.

An ongoing subplot revolves around their teenage daughter, Paige, who has no clue her parents are Commie spies but suspects that things aren’t as they appear. Why do mom and dad go out almost every night? How come she has no aunts, uncles, grandparents or cousins? Confused and unhappy, Paige joins a church youth group, discovers Jesus, and announces she wants to be baptized. Her atheist parents are horrified and try to talk her out of it, but eventually give up and have to play along lest their cover be blown.

The cast of supporting characters include next-door neighbor Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), a straight-arrow FBI counter-intelligence agent who has fallen head-over-heels for an exotic KGB double agent, Nina Sergeevna (Annet Mehendru). Beeman’s boss, Frank Gaad (John Boy Walton Richard Thomas), has a man-hungry secretary, Martha (Alison Wright), who is the spitting image of the hostess at our favorite restaurant – my wife and I have trouble suppressing laughs whenever she shows us to our table – but I digress. Martha is being wooed by, and eventually marries, a geeky fellow government employee named Clark. She is so starved for love and validation that she’ll do anything Clark asks, which includes planting a hidden microphone in John Boy’s Gaad’s office. Little does she know that Clark is actually Phillip Jennings.

The Americans, hands-down, is the best TV show of the last 10 years – light years beyond Mad Men, a full notch above my previous fave, Breaking Bad.  FX has extended it for a fourth season, scheduled to air next year.

Cancel all your plans through Labor Day and watch it.

Available on Amazon Instant Video. (The first two seasons are free for Amazon Prime members. You’ll have to pay to watch the final season.)

Catastrophe

1 season, six 30-minute episodes, originally appeared on Britain’s Channel 4

Having revisited the Cold War, you’ll undoubtedly feel the need to lighten up. This comedy, written by, and starring, Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, is the perfect way to do just that.

Rob, a late thirty-ish American exec on a business trip to London, meets Sharon, an early forty-ish Irish schoolteacher, in a bar and they commence a week-long torrid affair. He returns to Boston, assuming he’ll never see her again. A month later, she calls to tell him she’s pregnant.

Seeing this as an opportunity to have a conventional life, for which he secretly yearns due in part to having been raised by his bitch of a mother (hilariously played by Carrie Fisher, who we see only during phone conversations) he returns to London, and convinces Sharon to keep the baby and marry him. There’s something both sweet and sad about Rob and Sharon. They’re imperfect and not even in love with each other but, by God, they are determined to make this work because it’s their last chance.

The show has been renewed so you’re going to be seeing and hearing more about it over the coming years. The only nit I have to pick with Catastrophe is its misleading name because the coupling of Horgan and Delaney is anything but catastrophic to viewers yearning for an intelligently scripted comedy that’s actually – what a concept – funny.

Amazon Instant Video. (Free with Prime membership.)

Last Tango In Halifax

3 seasons, 18 one-hour episodes, originally appeared on BBC One and on PBS

Tango isn’t profound TV. Truth be told, it’s little more than a soap opera, but the characters are so well-drawn that you can’t help but be sucked in.

Alan (Derek Jacobi) and Celia (Anne Reed), who were high school sweethearts, are in their late seventies. They were married, but not to each other. Now that they’re widowed, they’ve reconnected, fallen back in love and decided to get hitched. This comes as a surprise to their forty-ish daughters, the real stars of this show.

Alan’s daughter, Gillian (Nicola Walker), is just a girl who can’t say no … to anyone with a penis. Oh, by the way, she killed her husband. Sort of. So she has to be especially careful not to mention this to her late husband’s brother, one of her many sex partners. Celia’s daughter, Caroline (Sarah Lancashire), the overachieving headmistress of an exclusive school, is married to a booze-addled author who has just left her for another woman but she is finding that liberating, having come to the realization that she is a lesbian who, as her new step-sister puts it in cricket terms, “bats for the other county.”

Set in northern England, in and around Halifax, the characters speak a dialect that seems more Scottish than English and, at times, sounds medieval. They say ‘owt” for nothing or zero, “methinks” for “I think,” “summat” for “something,” etc.  Be sure to turn on closed captioning so you won’t miss a word.

On Netflix and Amazon (seasons one and two). You’ll have to buy season three from Amazon.

The Legacy

One season, 10 one-hour episodes, originally appeared on Danish TV

An internationally renowned sculptress has unexpectedly expired.

Her adult children have been waiting for this moment, assuming they’ll inherit everything so they can start living the lifestyle they feel they deserve after putting up with mom’s eccentricities all these many years. They are about to find out they are mistaken.

Mom has left her estate to a fourth child she gave up for adoption, a sweet-hearted girl named Sunshine who works in a flower shop and has no idea she was born into a family of greedy vipers whose flaws and misdeeds are revealed over the 10 episodes that are conveniently subtitled for those of you who don’t speak fluent Danish.

The Legacy is compelling TV. And let's be real here. How often do you get the chance to learn about life among upper middle-class Scandinavians?  

Season two has already been shot but hasn’t yet been released.

Amazon Instant Video. Free for Amazon Prime members.

The Missing

Mini-series, eight sixty-minute episodes, originally appeared on BBC One in the UK and on Starz in the US

Continuing our tour of Europe, let’s head south to a charming village in France where Oliver Hughes, the five-year-old son of a vacationing British couple, has gone missing, snatched from his father in a crowded venue where drunk and crazed French football fans have gathered to watch the World Cup Finals on TV.

Oliver’s parents, Tony and Emily (James Nesbitt and Frances O’Connor), are devastated, desperate to find him. The French cops go through the motions of seeming concerned but only one, Julien Baptiste (Tcheky Karyo), seems to want to help; the rest are strangely detached.

Who stole the kid? A local convicted child pornographer? Was it Garrett, a fellow Brit who has put up 100,000 euros as a reward for information and. it turns out, has a penchant for kiddie porn himself? Was it the boy’s father who, we learn, has a violent streak his wife knew nothing about? And what does that arrogant tabloid journalist have over the French cop who is withholding evidence that just might solve the case?

Beats me. We won’t find out until tonight when we watch the final two episodes.

Amazon Instant Video: You’ll have to buy the entire season for $12.95.

I’ll be seeing you soon. In front of your TV.