Netflixing: Cedar Cove, Knife Fight, Halt & Catch Fire.

Our Netflix diet of late has been a potpourri of The X-Files, Quantum Leap, and Cedar Cove, judiciously arranged so that soothing Cedar Cove episodes come just before bedtime. Retiring to bed after some of the more gruesome X-Files episodes can endanger a peaceful night's rest!

Cedar Cove, we've discovered, is one of those "comfort food" series: undemanding plot-lines, idyllic setting, pleasant, good-looking characters, decent script and acting. It originated on Hallmark channel, to which we've not had access, but I can well imagine most of its fare being of this good-natured ilk.

Cedar Cove is based on Debbie Macomber's novels of the same name. The series focuses on Municipal Court Judge Olivia Lockhart's professional and personal life and the townsfolk of her small town, Cedar Cove. The Judge is nicely played by Andie MacDowell. Her "love interest" (there always has to be one of those) is Jack (Dylan Neal) the newly arrived from Philadelphia leading (only) reporter on the town's newspaper. See Wikipedia for full cast list. Filmed on beautiful Vancouver Island, the series' location is actually meant to be Port Orchard, Washington State, a dozen or so miles from Seattle.

If anyone's looking for a bit of undemanding comfort viewing as antidote to ubiquitous slam-bang nastiness, this series acts as welcome relief.

Decent movies, as against TV series, on Netflix have proved harder to find. We've begun watching several only to dump them after 20 minutes or so. The majority are definite "C", "D" or "E"-list fodder - in our estimation at least. Last weekend we tried a movie newly introduced to Netflix, Knife Fight, subject matter not as one might expect from the title. The film is about shenanigans in the American political campaign business. Rob Lowe (once of the wonderful West Wing) heads a cast which also includes another West Wing alumnus, Richard Schiff - the pair share a couple of the best scenes in the film, bring in much-needed chuckle-worthy one-liners. I really enjoyed the film, but most critics panned it. American politics and their shenanigans being comparatively new to me, I'm probably more easily pleased. I've seen several other movies of this genre, and for me, though this isn't one of the best, it's definitely better than some critics would have us believe, and worth a viewing, especially as full-on campaign season is about to come down on us once again.

Another, fairly new to Netflix, series devoid of slam-bang is Halt & Catch Fire. It originated on AMC channel, which has a good record of screening excellent series such as Breaking Bad and Mad Men. With those two as recommendation we decided to give Halt and Catch Fire a try. It's set in Dallas, Texas in the early 1980s, when personal computer development and production was in its infancy. Whereas Mad Men is about the advertising industry and its personalities, Halt & Catch Fire is about the burgeoning personal computer industry and those involved.

I didn't much enjoy the pilot, but as husband was intrigued we stuck with it, and I eventually became hooked too. One doesn't really need much, or any, deep tech know-how to appreciate the story lines - they're all about the characters, and their creative aims and dreams. The show is worth a look-in if you're tired of police and courtroom dramas, or hospital tales, or historical themes, or nasty slam-bang - this is something different, not top-notch but interestingly different.

PS~~ Halt and Catch Fire, known by the assembly mnemonic HCF, refers to several computer machine code instructions that cause a computer's CPU to cease meaningful operation. (Wiki)