WHAT I AM WATCHING AND READING

The news is the news, and I will comment more later, but let’s face it - one does not live on the news alone; if you do, it’s going to eventually drive you nuts.

One needs diversion in order to maintain perspective. And if Jamelle Bouie and Frank Bruni can do this, so can I.

And Awaaaaaayyyyy We Go!

Here in Los Angeles, there’s an ancient (going back to the 1920s, which is really old, here) institution over on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, just west of Vine Street: the Magic Castle. It’s not open to the public, you can only visit as a guest of a member. Membership is limited to magicians who can demonstrate to the membership committee that they’re good enough at their craft to be worthy of membership. Basically, that means they perform their routine for people who know the secrets and know what to look for, and they manage to not get caught out by these experts.

I’ve been fortunate to visit twice, as the guest of members. As one put it, “I come here in hopes of being knocked dead, to see someone do something I haven’t seen before, or have seen so often it’s been done to death - but differently. And to not be able to see them doing it.”

As both a screenwriter and an author, I use the same standard when it comes to what I watch at night, or what I buy and read.

Having seen some good stuff lately and read some books I really liked, I thought I would pass those on to you. So, not in any particular order other than divided between screen and page, here goes:

Most of the shows I like have been off the screen the past two years because of COVID-19 and the difficulty of production that caused. So far, it appears the writers put their Zoom conferences over that time to good use, with interesting seasons now showing up.

One of my long-time “guilty pleasures” is “Outlander.” I originally started watching when it showed up back in 2014 because Ronald D. Moore had chosen it as his next project after “Battlestar Galactica,” his reboot of a terrible old TV show that became The Best Space Opera Ever. I figured if it interested him, it would interest me - that’s sort of the standard I use in choosing shows and books: who did it and what do I think of them. That way I get my fix from a Reliable Performer, while I continue to be hopeful when I check out new stuff, that it will join that list.

“Outlander” combines two of my favorite things: the science-fiction genre of time travel and history. It’s the story of a 20th century woman doctor, who is transported to the 18th century, where she becomes involved in the Jacobite Revolt in Scotland, pre-revolutionary France (where Louis XVI commits droit d’signeur with her), the pirates of the Caribbean, and pre-revolutionary North Carolina. All as part of a romance across time with a guy she first meets as the younger bastard son of a Scottish Laird, who becomes a revolutionary, a mercenary, a political leader and soon one of the Founding American Fathers. There’s a lot of “bodice ripping” - Claire and Jamie take a lot of pleasure in each other’s company.

The history is excellent - socially, politically, militarily. It’s all quite accurate and a viewer can get a good idea of life 200 years ago. Putting a “liberated” 20th century woman into that space insures that the dramatic rule “all drama is conflict” rules. I’m told the primary demographic for this show is women over 40. That doesn’t surprise me - it guarantees an audience that likes intelligence and supports shows that deliver. If you haven’t seen “Outlander,” the show is worth getting and streaming.

The 14th season of the rebooted “Dr. Who” just arrived last night and really delivered. I’m one of those who have really liked Jodi Whittaker as The Doctor the previous two seasons.

Unfortunately, there’s a segment of the science fiction audience - the boys who never have/never will get laid - who have the social skills of rocks and live in mommy’s basement (sometimes literally), who disliked a girl coming along and ruining their fantasies about being a supreme being transcending time and made their dislike known. They’ve always been such embarrassments to me as an s-f writer that I largely avoided s-f cons for the problem of running across them and having to be embarrassed to discover they liked my work. Ms. Whittaker got a lot of online abuse from the “under the rock dwellers” when she was announced as the next transformation of The Doctor. I’ve enjoyed every one of The Doctors who have come along since the reboot in 2005 (David Tennant rules!), and was surprised initially by each one when they appeared - a condition that lasted about 20 seconds into their first episode.

Whittaker’s Doctor brings another perspective, and has made the show fresh. As a writer, I long ago learned that putting a woman in a man’s world where she has to be taken seriously is a guarantee of good drama (see: “Outlander,” “all drama is conflict”) that will give one all the conflicted drama they can take - plus the character has to resolve the problems with brains rather than brawn, which I always like (being brainy and not particularly brawny myself) so a writer has to put some effort into the project. The old classic shows may have been cheap cheap cheap, but they proved that Story Is King, and fortunately, while the show has the money for good effects now, somebody learned Roger Corman’s Rule (“Tom, I don’t have a million dollars to put into special effects to hide the fact there’s no there there, so give me some good ideas, OK?”). The new season arrived last night and is still available on BBC America.

“The First Lady” showed up last night and is Officially my favorite new show so far this season.

Using Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford, and Michelle Obama - the three First Ladies who were not like any First Lady before them - is really good. Intertwining the stories is interesting to me as a writer, because that’s easy to screw up - which they didn’t do. Having the wonderful Viola Davis as Michelle Obama, Michelle Pfeiffer become Betty Ford, and Gillian Armstrong bring Cleanor Roosevelt to life is a real treat. It’s also good that the gang in the writer’s room knows how to read a few history books.

“Billions” had a good season and you should go get it “on demand” if you missed it. Andrew Ross Sorkin, an actual Expert Talking Head on the subject, brings good knowledge of the way things are on Wall Street, with co-creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien making sure the stories engage. Corey Stoll’s Mike Prince is more dangerous because he really is “the devil with blue eyes in blue jeans” as opposed to Damien Lewis’ more Trumpish “Axe.” And I continue to really like Paul Giamatta. Everyone else is equally interesting and I await next season.

And “Better Call Saul” comes back tonight with two - count ‘em! Two! - episodes of the Final Season. Looking at the trailer, Vince and his crew of magicians didn’t sit on their hands the past two years, and the reality will probably out-do my imagination from what I saw. Beating the final season of “Breaking Bad” - aka The Greatest Most Satisfying Final Season of Any Show Ever - is a high bar, but so far this show only added satisfying depth and detail to the world created in that show and I expect nothing less now.

Enough tube talk.

As a fan of the golden years of the space program, and well-done Cold War thrillers, and good murder mysteries, I really liked Chris Hadfield’s “The Apollo Murders.” The fact Hadfield is an Actual Astronaut brought a lot of depth to it, and he used a lot of unknown Real History Of The Space Program (which he reveals in an afterword) to create the story. Most writers fail at combining genres as different as science fiction and murder mysteries and political thrillers, but I read this one in a weekend because I couldn’t put it down. It really lived up to the high praise from fellow magicians in their blurbs on the back cover.

I think probably every boy my age saw “The Dam Busters” when he was a kid and loved it (and if you didn’t, you saw the attack on the dam when you watched the attack on the Death Star in the good Star Wars movie, the first one that came out back in 1977). Sir Max Hastings, who is about two months different in age from me, certainly did. And then, because he became a really great reporter and interviewer, he interviewed everyone who was actually involved in the event 50 years ago when they were all still alive, and kept all his tapes and notes. And then, because he turned that reporter’s ability to tell a good story into a major career as a great historian, last year he released all that as “Operation Chastise” (the real name of the mission). In it, you will discover that Guy Gibson was in reality the polar opposite of the Gibson character created by Richard Todd in the movie. He was, as one of the others said, “A bloody-minded English schoolboy.” Which makes it very interesting that someone with a personality most people would cross the street to avoid could attract the men he did - guys who had made their reputations and had nothing left to prove, who no one would have faulted for not volunteering to do this - and not only attracted them but inspired them on one of the most outlandish missions ever flown. Sir Max does the story the favor of continuing it after the bombs break the Mohne Dam, by recounting what happened to the people who lived downstream, who weren’t all Nazis. Trust me on this: if you see a book with Sir Max Hastings’ name on the cover - just get it and read it. You’ll be glad you did. My favorite military historian. And this one is even better than most of the others.

James Holland is, as my editor at Osprey calls him, a “very big wind” over in Blighty as a military historian. He’s another one on my list of authors whose books I just pick up when I see their name on the cover. He wrote a very good - and very different account than Sir Max’s - history of the dams raid, “Dam Busters,” which fills any crevices not filled in “Operation Chastise.” This year he came out with what I think is his best - certainly his most heartfelt - book, “Brothers in Arms,” which tells the story of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, a regiment of the Territorial Army who started World War II riding horses and became the guys who were to the British armored forces what the paratroopers of Easy Company - whose story was told by Stephen Ambrose in “Band of Brothers” - were to the infantry between D-Day and VE-Day. You really come to know these guys. You’re happy with their victories and devastated by their deaths. Life inside an armored steel box is really brought to life. I compared this with “Band of Brothers,” a work of history that can easily be re-read many times, because they are both of similar quality. And don’t forget you can pick up anything else on the “James Holland in Books” Amazon page in confidence of money well spent and time reading put to good use.

Philipps Payson O’Brien, a military historian at the University of Glasgow, has become known in the past six weeks here in the US as a knowledgeable talking head on MSNBC and CNN about the war in Ukraine. He managed to get noticed by the bookers at those places for his Very Serious History Book, “How The War Was Won,” a deep analysis of how production, technology, and economic power, manifested in air and sea supremacy, was the key to Allied victory in World War II. It’s a very interesting hypothesis that I find compelling despite the fact the author’s only source for referring to America’s Most Mythological General, Douglas MacArthur, is the sycophantic hagiography written by General Charles Willoughby, Big Mac’s least member of his “Bataan Gang,” a “chief of intelligence” who demonstrated that “military intelligence” can be an oxymoron when he failed to realize the Japanese were coming for the Philippines in 1941 and that the Chinese were going to intervene in Korea in 1950. So far, it’s pretty challenging.

When Adam Tooze recommends something, you should at least consider it. So when I read his praise of Deborah Cohen’s “Last Call at the Hotel Imperial,” I ordered it. After two chapters, I can say this history of the American foreign correspondents of “the lost generation” who saw the events and met the people responsible for World War II - and who tried to warn the world about them - lives up to his praise. The story covers both their professional and private lives. Most interesting to me is Dorothy Thompson, the only American reporter to be expelled from Germany on Hitler’s express order for her coverage of him. I was familiar with the names and some of their books, but they are people now forgotten by history who deserve to be recalled. I think I would have enjoyed knowing them as much as I know I would have enjoyed knowing the screenwriters who lived at The Gardens of Allah apartments here in Hollywood’s golden age.

And.... T-T-T-That’s All Folks!

At least for this time.

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