Carly isn’t sure how long she has had Netflix or nor why she still pays for it for her family. All her kids are adults invariably well-paid jobs and really should be paying for it themselves. Sometimes she gets really annoyed, and just for the hell of it changes the password. She then measures how long it is before they all begin messaging her and petitioning her for this golden password. But the cost for a family or an individual is pretty similar, so really she will carry on for the moment.
Some of the things she has watched recently have been very helpful for her career. She thinks that they are fine to use as CPD (continuing professional development) points. Firstly, there was a short miniseries, Adolescence, shot over an hour for each one about a teenage boy who had murdered a fellow school student. She watched this with a colleague in Podgorica, Montenegro, where they had gone for a jolly. Shame, not only did it rain ALL THE TIME; but they were staying in a place so ugly it made Milton Keynes look like the UK premier holiday destination. This series all hinged on social media. Carly learnt all about incels and the 80/20 rule where 80% of women only like 20% of men. And so that leaves the other 80% of the men out in the cold and estranged from love. It seemed a bit harsh. Carly typed up notes so that she could provide evidence that this series really was educational for her and her colleague.
And then Carly thinks about herself. She is still steadfastly single despite being on dating apps and trying oh so very hard to meet someone. She looks at all these couples going about the place. So many of the women are beyond ugly and they have ensnared a man. Maybe these women look like their partner’s mother and so these men see beauty where Carly feels there is none. Really, she just shouldn’t be so bitter, and this 80/20 rule should leave even more men available for Carly, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe Carly should just try and be uglier? The other series that Carly wants to count towards her professional learning to make her a better paediatrician is Love on the Spectrum. There is so much mandatory learning at her hospital. Hours of tedious and trite interviews with all sorts of people followed by a banal quiz which her dog Talulah could probably answer and still get above the pass mark. At least with this series, Carly can reflect on how autistic teenagers are keen to date and look at some of the strategies they employ to ensure success. These could well apply to Carly. She wonders if she is in fact autistic. She thinks not but as she is so scary who is going to suggest this? But she does realise that nowadays being autistic is very much verging on the new normal. Most of the participants in Glow-Up, a fantastic competition also on Netflix, for make-up artists, are autistic too. And they are always addressing this aspect of their personality in the creative brief. Like many of these competition programmes, they follow a set pattern. Whether it is baking, sewing or glassblowing, they are all the same. And Carly just loves them. In Glow-Up, they start with an industry assignment, and the two worst performers end up in the red chairs. They have 15 minutes less to complete their creative brief than their competitors. This is judged by Val and Dom (two make-up gurus) and a guest judge. There is of course only one winner who basks in glory for that particular week. Sometimes they get the ultimate accolade and with a verbal “ding-dong” from Val. The two scoring the lowest are in a face off. They must do a 10-minute make-up on identical twins! Maybe a smoky eye or jewel-encrusted lip. One lives to tell another tale and can return the following week. But one is sent off to collect their things and leave. There is always a lot of crying and hugging for all the contestants whether they win or lose. It reminds Carly of a saying from her previous London Rebbetzin. She would say, “Whether you win or lose, you always win!” Carly really disagreed. It is important in life to take defeat on the chin; or is it the nose? There goes Carly again. Irrelevant musings as always!
Carly has watched all manner of cooking competitions including the Blue-Ribbon Baking Championship set in the good olde USofA, The Chef’s Table, BBQ showdown and Cooking with Cannabis. She loved the one on innovative cocktails too. Most of these programmes are a one-off series and this makes Carly so very sad. But she has watched several series of Blown Away. She gets all hot and sweaty thinking about this programme. Again, it is a competition, and they produce the most amazing glass pieces but as the participants are spending all their time by furnaces, glory holes (whatever they are!) and wielding hot metal implements to shape things they are all sweating all the time. And because it is glass, not an episode goes out without someone smashing their hard made work. This is definitely something to watch at home. No one in their right mind would want to be in the boiling hot and dangerous Blown Away workshop.
Sometimes, Carly puts in some of her favourite craft words into the search engine, but this rarely yields results. How could there be a speedy knitting competition? Fast and knitting are pretty much mutually exclusive. So, Carly asks for recommendations.
She recently watched Kim’s Convenience Store that Tova had suggested to her. Nice and light watching. Nothing scary; but it was a teensy bit old-fashioned although amusing, nonetheless. Her son Harry told her to watch The Metal Detectorists, which was such fun. Really, something that Carly has never understood. She has recently seen people by the beach in Jaffa searching for metal bits with large waders and unwieldy equipment with headphones to hear the metal talking to them. But the Netflix programme was entertaining anyway. Like many of the podcasts she loves to listen to, she learnt a lot about a new topic she previously knew nothing about.
When she started going out with David, oh so long ago, they watched The Queens Gambit which was excellent and meant she briefly thought she might want to learn chess but then she decided against that. She often sees it still advertised five years on and it makes her think of David and smile.
She really enjoyed both Shtisel and Unorthodox which are fictional programmes about the orthodox Jewish community. Certainly, Shtisel was made to be amusing as well as intimate. Interesting, Unorthodox used some of the same actors. Maybe the pool is too small. Then Carly thought back to some of the Spanish series she had seen on Netflix. She watched two period pieces – The Gran Hotel set in the 1900s and Cable Girls in 1930s and Money Heist which was contemporary. They had so many of the same actors. It is quite fun trying to work out who is who in which one! She tried to watch them in the original language rather than dubbed. This is not for pretentious reasons of needing to see them authentically in the language in which they were originally made. But because the temptation is to do something else at the same time whereas Carly can really switch off if she is fully immersed and that means watching the screen for the English translation.
Sometimes, Carly will decide to spend an evening in and watch an entire movie. If they are too scary or boring, she can easily switch to another one. This is where the top 10 film recommendations are really helpful to narrow things down. Mostly she goes for feel good and romantic comedies. “No, thank you” Carly says to sci-fi or ones with too much murder.
Her daughter suggested Emily in Paris. What a wonderful and amusing light-hearted series. Carly keeps checking if any new episodes will be coming out but at the end Emily moves to Madrid or Rome. So, it won’t be the same title. Shame that Carly’s memory is so rubbish that she cannot remember in which capital this series ended!
Carly ponders what her favourite series is on Netflix. It has to be Love is Blind. She has watched the American and UK series since its inception. She isn’t sure why she is so smitten. She doesn’t see herself as being one of the women in the pods. They are all fabulously pretty and aged 20 to 35. Carly, of course, does think she is fabulously pretty for her age! But no one on these programmes has any lines or wrinkles. They probably all have Botox. Some of the people at Carly’s work have had Botox numerous times. Carly looks at them with her head tilted to one side and then the other. She wonders if their lips are going to burst. Certainly, they seem really full and pouty and thin. She wonders if they could burst. And there is an excellent blood supply to the lips, so if they did burst, there would be an inordinate amount of blood and possible death may ensue. Really can lips be that necessary to fiddle around with.
Back to Love is Blind. So, Carly knows this is pure voyeurism. She likes to predict how many couples will get engaged, sight unseen, how many will not physically fancy their fiancé and how many will say “yes” at the altar? Carly has done a survey and only one third get married and it is usually the woman who says no. The tension builds up and Carly just cannot wait for each new episode to be screened. She is a total addict and unable to contain her excitement. Unfortunately, she only has her daughter-in-law to share in her obsession. She has decided not to start watching Love is Blind from other countries as it might take over. Well actually even more so. Who is she kidding – it has already. She even made a Ken and Barbie Love is Blind. Will they tie the knot and smash the glass? Who knows…
