Friends, this is the first blog post I have ever published in my life! Wish me luck and go easy on me, please!

My first post is going to be about my first love, television.  As a sheltered, all-girls’ school attending, child of the 80s, watching TV was one of my all-time, favorite activities. Not impressive, I know, but this blog will be nothing if not truthful.  Anyway, by sixth grade, my sister used to find me after school in our family room munching on a bag of nacho cheese Doritos and sipping on some chilled Coca-Cola doing hour after hour of homework with Little House on the Prairie, the Facts of Life or sometimes recorded soap operas on in the background. (My sis was horrified and claimed that this set up would not work, but I did manage to graduate high school with straight As, so, there went that theory.)  Every Sunday, I used to snag the paper TV guide booklet that came free with the actual printed newspaper and scan the entries for the week ahead to see what might interest me.  Water cooler topics for us middle schoolers included discussions of Bruce and Maddie’s big first kiss on Moonlighting or fine nuances of the ABC mini-series North & South and I participated wholeheartedly.  You get the picture – TV shows were a big deal for me and I’ve seen a lot of them so if something really draws me in this many years later, I think it’s a safe bet that it’s good.  So here  are two lesser known TV treats for you all to enjoy (I will not recommend the obvious, because if you are not watching This Is Us right now, I just can’t..). Here we go:

Funny/Heartwarming TV Show Treat: Jane the Virgin (CW)

Ok, so being raised in a conservative (behavior not politics) household, the name of this show itself kept me a away for a while. 🙂 But when I finally watched the first episode, I was hooked!  Set in sunny Miami (which makes me happy to begin with) Jane is the story of Jane Villanueva, a young, twenty-something Hispanic American woman with brains, beauty, a big heart, and aspirations to be a writer of romance novels.  She is funny and fun, and lives with her mom and grandma (who are a special combination of sassy and sour that anyone would want to live with and learn from) while dating her police officer boyfriend and pursuing her studies when unbeknownst to her, she is artificially inseminated by a stranger’s sperm at a routine visit to the OB/GY.  The sperm donating stranger is of course, a devastatingly handsome, charismatic hotelier.  Jane finds herself drawn to him when she becomes pregnant and decides to have the baby. Sound ridiculous? It is, but it is a show with real heart, in the vein of Ugly Betty, has a fantastic love triangle that has you rooting for both teams, a warm dose of hispanic culture, and lots of endearing side characters and storylines (mostly in the form of Jane’s family members).  Also, it is modern spoof on telenovelas so while there are serious moments and life lessons learned, it usually doesn’t get too heavy, which I appreciate from time to time.

Suspenseful/Watch-With-Your-Partner Or Friend TV Show Pick: The Five (Netflix)

On the other side of the viewing spectrum, we have The Five, a British Drama series in 10 episodes about 4 friends from childhood who experience major trauma when as middle schoolers they irresponsibly leave one friend’s younger brother in the woods by himself briefly and said brother goes missing.  20+ years later the missing younger brother’s DNA shows up at a new, murder scene that is being investigated by one of the original Five who went to the woods that day so many years ago.  Is the younger brother alive?  Will the four friends come together after years separated by the tragedy? Does the current crime have anything to do with the missing younger brother? Is the missing younger brother a murderer? Watch and find out — great suspense, original story, strong acting (featuring one of Lady Mary’s suitors from Downton Abbey, Tom Cullen, as the main character Mark Wells), and some morsels of wisdom about the nature of family bonds, friendship, childhood dreams, and adulthood make it a winner. Plus, we couldn’t put the puzzle pieces of the based-on-a-Harlan Coben mystery together before the writers wanted us to, and that means it was pretty well done.

Happy viewing and until next Monday.

Yours truly, M