As much as I love reading books, there are times when I’ll put my books aside and immerse myself in a film or TV drama.
I might miss the feel of a book in my hands, the pleasure of turning pages and finding words waiting for me to read.
But I find comparable pleasures in watching films. There’s a sense of expectancy and mystery as the story unfolds, and there’s a sense of trust, too, as the viewer follows the story from one scene to another, wondering what will happen next.
It’s interesting how stories work—whether on the screen or on the page—how images that flicker through a writer’s or director’s imagination end up flickering through your own imagination, and how you are granted the ability to enter a world so effortlessly, so seamlessly (and where you would stay if only you could stay, if only you didn’t have to sleep or eat or go to work the next morning).
A well-told story, whether shared on the page or on the screen, contains characters who you come to love and care about as deeply as you care about your own loved ones. It contains conflicts, of course, and struggles, as well as hopes and dreams, and a sense of possibility for the characters—and for yourself.
Here are three shows that have convinced me over the past few months to put down a book while still nurturing my love of stories:
A French Village
This is a tale of morals and manners, of courage and strength under oppressive circumstances, but of weakness and submission, too, to forces that sometimes can overwhelm us. What drew me into the story was the subtle ways the writer revealed how the Nazi occupation altered life for residents of a French village during the war. The variety of perspectives made it clear that each character needed something different. Would one stay loyal to certain principles and remain unwilling to compromise? Would another betray her loyalties and agree to compromise to get what she wanted or to simply stay alive? By the end of the show's seven seasons, the characters had grown in unexpected aways from the start of the war to the years after the war, a time when their children come of age and start to ask their own questions about what side their parents or grandparents took during the war.
For more info, visit:
Resistance
Another World War Two saga set in France, this series tells the story of a group of young resistance fighters and the dangers they face in their struggle against the Nazis. It’s based on the lives of a handful of actual Resistance fighters, but one of the characters is fictional and was created in order to help tell the story of the others. (The story is so gripping, and each characters so interesting, that I didn’t discover this fact until the end of the story, and was stunned to discover which of the characters was fictional.) What struck me about this series was how such young people could have made such courageous choices to stand up to the enemy and fight for what they believed in, despite the risks.
For more info, visit:
World on Fire
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/world-on-fire/
This series, set in England and Poland before and during World War II, involves a young translator at the British embassy in Warsaw and the two women—one Polish, one English--who he falls in love with, and the consequences of his love for each. Of course, the onset of the war complicates things for everyone. How will these characters survive the war? Who will emerge whole, who in shattered pieces? Can love endure distance, separation, betrayal? It’s also the story of an American journalist, played by Helen Hunt, who files her stories from Berlin beneath the watchful eye of the German censor and who has to deal with her own survival and drama, which unfolds along parallel lines to the love story.
For more info, visit:
So, if you need a break from the page, you might enjoy taking a look at these shows. In the process, you might find inspiration for your writing and a fresh way of looking at your own stories.
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