Later today I’m going to be on BBC Radio Berkshire recommending some TV shows to binge on. It’s from my background at Radio Times and writing TV history pieces, and I’ve now done it quite often. It means I have the radio on most of the afternoon, it’s a good station, everything’s great, except sometimes finding a show to recommend is surprisingly hard. <\/p>\n
This week, not to oversell this at all, I’m recommending a drama that more than 30 years ago tried teaching me a lesson that I didn’t learn until right now. It’s “Northern Exposure”, a 1990s series that has recently come to Amazon Prime. (Just an aside: I would not know this if it weren’t for Catherine Fowles, who I don’t know. But Lydia Parker was on Facebook asking for recommendations and as I rushed to say “Nobody Wants This.” — the full stop is important — Fowles said about “Northern Exposure” now being on streaming. Thank you very much.)<\/p>\n
Last night I watched some of it again, and if you know the series at all, you might even guess which episode I went for. That’s right, it was “Burning Down the House” by Robin Green, otherwise known as season 3, episode 14.<\/p>\n
You don’t look like you’re quite certain yet. So let me tell you that it’s the cow flinging episode. It’s the episode where artist and local radio DJ “Chris in the Morning” sets out to build an enormous catapult and fling a cow through the air.<\/p>\n
Now, if you don’t know, I will not tell you what happens. I realise I’m not really telling you anything — I may have been specific about an episode title, but I haven’t told you what the show is about and I’ve only named one character out of the reasonably large ensemble.<\/p>\n
Because I want to focus on the cow flinging. There is such a lot in this 50-minute episode and while it’s all related, it’s a subtle relation. Each part, it seems to me, is about change and moving on, and it’s about the art of the moment, and very definitely about the reaching for something being more than the getting.<\/p>\n
“It’s not the thing you fling, it’s the fling itself,” says Chris in the Morning.<\/p>\n
Thirty-odd years ago, I was moved by that episode. Last night, I was moved again. Yet there was a difference that comes from the gap in between. I resent looking back, I rarely think of the current moment, and I’ve always been afraid of the future and specifically of not achieving what I so want to.<\/p>\n
That’s all still true for me, but also, listening to that line, feeling the themes of the episode, something changed. Maybe I’ll forget this tomorrow, but god I’ve had a great journey. Just because I feel as if I’m still only starting out, just because I hope there is so much ahead of me, it doesn’t mean I should forget the route to here. The route from a little boy wanting so much to write, and the route to this moment, right now, talking to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Later today I’m going to be on BBC Radio Berkshire recommending some TV shows to binge on. It’s from my … Continue reading