The Literate Kitty

  "They laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at them because they’re all the same."                                              ~Kurt Cobain Although these words aren’t uttered until the final episode of the first season, the idea is a poignant leitmotif which runs throughout the French series, Astrid , from the very start… and I couldn’t be more enchanted. This show is an absolute delight. Astrid, streaming on PBS via Amazon Available to stream on PBS, Astrid (or Astrid et Raphaëlle , in its native French—no idea why they decided to drop the other name, stateside) is another fine police procedural/detective program from Walter Presents… but there’s so much more to it than just that .  On paper, Astrid might seem not so different from a host of other cop shows over the years. It features an odd couple: the messy, loud det...

Synchronicity : an apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more similar or identical events that are causally unrelated. Soooooo… pretty sure it wasn’t because I did some search for “cool shows set in Amsterdam” (because I definitely didn’t), but the fact remains, nontheless, that I found myself watching, back-to-back, two different series set… in Amsterdam.  Anywho, I'm going with " synchronicity is totally a thing" , mkay? (The fact that there's also a totally-legit  The Police tie-in, here? I mean, just kill me now.) _______________ The series about the quasi-retired French detective, on holiday with his wife in Amsterdam? Yeah, Baptiste was a no-brainer for me, because I found both seasons of The Missing  riveting (My review of the first of that series’ two seasons can be found here .) Baptiste , let me say, is definitely best appreciated after watching both seasons of The Missing , because—while it certainly stands on its own, just fine—the...

For all that we like to bitch and moan about the Internet Culture we've been living in for the past couple decades-- misinformation and fake news, anyone? --it has undeniably broadened our world and made things available to us like never before. Case in point? Access to televised content from around the world! No longer are we relegated to "200 channels and nothing on" (because seriously, I've  never considered the presence of dozens of shopping, religious, ancient game-show, and telenovela channels as "having something on"). No, now we can just flip to one of many streaming sources, browse to our hearts' content, and (eventually) come up with something intriguing... which for me, increasingly, has included a lot of dramatic TV productions from abroad. Latest find? The French thriller, "La Mante" ("The Mantis").  [Mad props, by the way, to Netflix, for keeping track of what I stream, so they could pop up with an ad for "s...