Escape The Pandemic With Comfort TV

I’m jealous of Esquire Magazine’s Kate Storey. 

In her most recent article, “There Has Never Been a Better Time to Finally Watch 'The Sopranos’,” the culture writer confessed that she didn’t watch the HBO hit series when it aired from 1999 to 2006.

I’m astonished. Not sure how you write about culture while skipping the best-written show ever on television. During the Sopranos years, references to the mob series were everywhere.

Better late than never, I suppose, and Storey says she’s watching the shows as a nightly antidote to the pandemic.

“…when the quarantines hit last week, I considered doing my usual scan of everything new on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon… I wanted to leave my phone in the other room and watch something I knew would be good. I decided it was time to watch The Sopranos.

'“The fact that people aren’t talking about The Sopranos is exactly why I wanted to watch it—it’s like going back in a time machine. It’s a pure escape. When I turn it on at the end of a long day of reading about and reporting on a pandemic, it feels like I can put the news—and the world, really—on pause. I sit on the couch with my husband, and take a trip back to the ’90s….

“And, have you heard? The Sopranos is a great show! So great, in fact, that it fully captures my attention for hours at a time…Everything else disappears for a while.”

I loved “The Sopranos” and envy anyone watching the series for the first time.

Like Ms. Storey, I’ve been searching for something to help me put the pandemic on pause. Something to transport me far from this time of plague. Everyone I know seems to be watching “Tiger King.” Weirdly addicting. Hardly what I had in mind.

Enter “Downton Abbey.”

Somehow I missed the hugely popular British series when everyone else was raving about it from 2010 to 2015.

As a result, I get to watch it for the first time.

Jealous?

I started the series last week and I’m now on Season Four. I’ve been trying to pace myself - two episodes a day - because I want it to last.

I need something like “Downton Abbey” right now. My stress levels - yours too, I bet - are off the charts.

After the daily drumbeat of doom, draconian rules, unreliable models, grim predictions and petty politics, this period piece is like slipping into a warm bath.

Good manners, servants who sometimes forget their place, star-crossed lovers. Oh, and unimaginable wealth and opulence.

Real life? Not even close. That’s what makes it perfect for our time.

On top of that, there’s the sumptuous music. Wikipedia reports that the score for each episode was recorded with a 35-piece orchestra, with composer John Lunn at the piano. Positively seductive.

Yes, ”Downton Abbey” is a tad cliched. Much of the plot seems to revolve around characters opening letters, looking chagrined and then refusing to reveal the contents of their mysterious missive.

So what? It’s escapism. Comfort TV.

Turn on Britain in the 1920s and turn off America in 2020.

If only for an hour.