u/JustGoodSense

Fingers crossed our boys have cameos as court hangers-on, or pig herders.

The Uprising

A few suggestions to hopefully ease withdrawal. Most people doing this seem to be suggesting straight-up horror media, but if you want something maybe leaning more toward the comedy side and you’re not super particular about the genre being mashed up, read on.

Since you already have at least a month’s Apple subscription, don’t skip Slow Horses if you haven’t watched it yet. Very funny comedy/spy mashup with bursts of sudden violent action. Great eccentric characters (you have to have seen or heard about Gary Oldman’s flatulent spy master). The most recent season has one of the funniest deaths I’ve seen in a while. There is also Bad Monkey—comedy/detective mashup—from the creator of Ted Lasso and Scrubs, based on a Carl Hiassen novel, that takes place in the Florida Keys and Bahamas. It’s got laughs on top of a prophesy, a curse and a ghost. Also a gorgeous underwater meetup with a manatee. Eccentric characters, naturally. Oh, and sudden violent action.

But the Apple show I really want to recommend that didn’t get a lot of attention two years ago, is The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin. An anachronistic farce that takes place in the 18th century, starring Noel Fielding (Mighty Boosh/Great British Bake-off) as the legendary (in his own mind) highwayman and Hugh Bonneville as the lawman eager to clap him in irons (or take a kickback from him, whatever). It got a lot of comparisons to Monty Python when it premiered, but I think it’s way more Mel Brooks. Way more. It’s worth checking out at least a couple episodes to see if it’s to your taste.

Over on Netflix, have you seen The Decameron? Based loosely on Boccaccio, it’s a comedy/historical about a group of Florentine nobles and their servants heading to the country to escape the Black Death, unaware that it beat them there. It’s really an ensemble, but Tanya Reynolds stands out as the nominal protagonist Licisca, and she’s probably the most Patricia-like character I’ve seen before Widow’s Bay. Again, eccentric characters, some of them absolutely insufferable, and plenty of medieval horniness. (Fun fact, to me anyway because I love her: Reynolds is playing Ted Lasso’s new assistant coach later this summer.)

Finally, reading material. Not much funny, though. Widow’s Bay put me in mind of two H.P. Lovecraft short novels, especially. Dreams in the Witch House and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward are about Colonial-era curses out of the past haunting the present (here, about 1920-ish) in New England. They are two of Lovecraft’s best stories. Creepy, engagingly if floridly written, and not too tied up in all the Cthulhu mythos hullabaloo.*

Finally, look for the short story “Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner (1974). Its often-anthologized and anthologies go in and out of print, so check your library. It’s about a magazine illustrator on vacation who discovers a riverside and woods littered with weird stick formations (kind of like party decorations!) and the scary encounter they lead him to. It’s a classic.

^((* Obligatory acknowledgment that yes, HPL was a virulent racist, but these stories include very few direct indications of that — maybe one snotty aside about “negroes,” I think. Not like a couple of his other ones hoooo-boy. It’s understandable if you’re not interested, but if you are, the inspiration on things like) ^(Widow’s Bay) ^(is absolutely there.))

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