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These video series shown above will take you on regular trips to South Africa, Australia, England, Greek island of Corfu and India! |
Armchair Expats
My wife and I have spent nearly every evening for the past decade or so as armchair expatriates, leaving America behind and spending hours in other parts of the English-speaking world. We travel by video streaming services to cities, villages and rural areas of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada and pretty much anywhere that English speaking folks have established themselves. We leave behind the bulletproof vests, serial killers, SWAT teams, predator-driven, high-intensity thrillers and cheesy "reality" shows that make up a typical evening of American television.
Our Viewing Criteria
We have this test question for any new TV series: "Would we want to have dinner with these characters?" If so, we watch a few episodes and ask another question: "Do I feel better after spending time in this series?" As long as we can answer both of these questions in the affirmative, we keep watching the series. But if the episodes start going dark, nasty or generally emulating the "edgy" dreck served up by most American media we instantly drop them and move on.
Looking back over our nightly travels "abroad," we see that the series we spend the most time with share many of these qualities:
• There are no commercials or ads breaking up the flow (at least there are none after each episode begins).
• The characters are generally good people with reasonably good intentions.
• The characters are pursuing laudable goals and encountering plausible obstacles that they eventually overcome.
• There is little or no violence or gore.
• There is beautiful scenery.
• Our characters are not constantly battling a life-threatening evil or slogging through a dark, dystopian world.
• When the series is over we feel better, rather than worse, at having spent time with these characters. In particular, we don't feel ashamed or voyeuristic at having been sucked into something that was mostly negative or merely sensationalistic.
Our Recommended Series
Below is a list of 55 fictional series we have seen and recommend, categorized by the part of the world to which they will take you. The majority of these are from two low-cost sources: Acorn TV ($5.99/month) and PBS Passport ($5/month). A few are from Hulu and Netflix.
[Dec 6, '22 Update: We're currently exploring & enjoying Britbox (from BBC & ITV). So far we can recommend these full original series set in England: Cold Feet, As Time Goes By and All Creatures Great & Small (1978 version, 90 episodes!). But you'll find many more contemporary series from BBC and ITV there as well.]
