'Can Tony Soprano make me a better parent?': the lessons we've learned from lockdown TV
I am a Pisces, which – if you believe in the eminently sketchy world of astrology – means that my personality should be categorised by an “artistic temperament”, “empathy” and “sensitivity.” In other words, I should be an emotional mess prone to sharing said traits through a thinly-disguised medium, like writing for instance.
I wondered whether Dylan Witter, the forlorn, the heart-on-his-sleeve protagonist of sitcom Lovesick was a Pisces when I first started watching the show. Initially aired in Channel 4 in 2014 – and bearing the visionary title Scrotal Recall – the sitcom tells the story of downtrodden Dylan (played by a shaggy-haired Johnny Flynn) tracking down his past sexual partners to tell them he has recently contracted chlamydia. I did not think Dylan was a Pisces because of his STI, but rather because of the way the show’s meandering anthology episodes gave viewers a hilarious insight into his damaging pattern of relationships.
Each date or girlfriend – no matter how seemingly ideal or disastrous – would be latched on to and then discarded as his cloying need for love became claustrophobic. A therapist might say that he was using relationships as a distraction from addressing deeper problems with intimacy and vulnerability. What a Pisces.
Bingeing all three series of Lovesick (now on Netflix) during lockdown, I learned about my own potentially damaging cycle of previous relationships and the need to take stock of reality. If Dylan could find love, the rest of us Pisceans surely can, too. Ammar
Kalia
Parenting
It has been over a year since I had a baby, but it’s only over the past couple of months that I have really started parenting: dealing with tantrums, establishing boundaries, devising elaborate distraction techniques when there’s a laptop/TV remote/chocolate croissant in the vicinity. Most days I feel like a total amateur, but I have recently become devoted to the teachings of a new parenting guru: his name is Flop, he’s a small woollen creature and he disseminates his doctrine via the CBeebies cartoon Bing.
In the show, Flop guides the eponymous three-year-old bunny through the manifold disappointments and setbacks of toddlerhood with inexhaustible patience and a ready sense of fun. I have spent the past few weeks watching him like a hawk, finding inspiration in his spookily even temper, gentle authority (the fact he’s voiced by Mark Rylance lends him a certain gravitas) and the way he encourages Bing’s independence without ever putting pressure on him. I only hope I am absorbing enough wisdom to cope when threenagerdom finally hits.
The fact that actual adolescence is a long way down the line hasn’t stopped me scanning current binge-watch The Sopranos for tips on what not to do: in particular, how to prevent my son ending up rude, workshy and infantile like Anthony Jr. I have become obsessed with trying to work out where Tony and Carmela went wrong. Was it indulgence? Lack of direction? The fact his father is a murderous mobster? Hopefully it was the latter. Rachel
Aroesti
French
I was a horrifically uptight, chronically bored know-it-all teenager, and, er, now I’m older. By the time I went to university to study languages (easier than English, right?! Fewer books? Oh, same amount of books - OK!) I was sleeping in every day, doing my best to never actually speak the languages I was paying thousands of pounds to learn, and Googling “dropping out uni pros and cons” at least eight times a day.
Fast forward through a calamitous year abroad, I got back to university a changed person (read: all of my friends had graduated, so I had no distractions), and actually did some work. Très bien, 2:1, job done ... except that the thought of speaking French still fills me with total and utter dread five years later. I often joke that I only use it in emergency situations (unconscious French guy on the ground? Yeah, I’ll give it a go!) but it genuinely provokes severe anxiety in me.
Watching Fary’s standup on Netflix during lockdown - in particular Hexagone - has pulled me out of the literature-heavy world where I never felt smart enough, and back into why I actually cared about studying the language in the first place: it sounds amazing. Fary’s irreverent routines about race, the immigrant experience, and the general preposterousness of the world is a plus, too.
Forget the imperfect subjunctive: I would much rather be able to understand these gags about horrible racists. Just don’t ask me about Spanish, please – that really is a lost cause. Hannah J
Davies
DIY
Quarantine has got me fully appreciating things I was previously only dimly aware of: video conferencing. Local food delivery services. My children. Most rewardingly of all, I have stopped “getting a man in” and embraced the fact that YouTube tutorials can show you how to perform literally any domestic task. For almost a decade in our house, the grease marks inside the triple-glazed oven door have been a taunting mystery – no longer, thanks to a video in which a set of disembodied arms calmly removes and dismantles said door, before cleaning every pane of glass and putting it all back. In the clip they don’t chisel baked filth off with a knife like I have to, but still: the door sparkles.
Drunk on success, I stride outside, armed with the mortar and trowels I bought from B&Q 18 months ago but never used because I didn’t know how to repoint brickwork. Well, now I do because I’ve got a geezer on YouTube … hang on, it’s Craig from Big Brother season one! I’ve got Craig from Big Brother season one walking me through it. Three hours, some swearing and 28 full replays of the video later, it’s another job well done. Now, somebody stop me before I type “loft conversion” into the YouTube search box …
Jack Seale
Crafting
Netflix’s Next in Fashion has proved itself to be the perfect antidote to my lockdown boredom. Hosted by Alexa Chung and Queer Eye’s Tan France, it has all the ingredients of great reality binge-watching: intense rivalries, tight timeframes and even a bloody accident involving a fabric bale.
Critiquing the near-perfect stitching of contestants each episode has replaced the type of bitter disdain I usually reserve for Love Island. Each time someone dares leave a hem or lining even slightly unfinished, an audible groan escapes me; after high-flying duo Minju and Angel failed to win the red-carpet round, my outrage reached heights last seen when Susan Boyle lost out on the BGT title in 2009.
The irony of my high standards is stark, as I have spent the majority of lockdown badly upcycling a vintage armchair – originally blood-red and peeling in places, an item of furniture so ugly it could have inspired Charlotte Perkins Gilman to pick up her pen.
It is the effort that counts, though. Sewing is a pastime wonderfully suited
to quarantine, a slow needle threading through cotton on an evening – the “doing” equivalent of a G&T or warm bath. With shops closed, taking a leaf out of the show’s book has been the perfect distraction. Poppie Platt Fitness
Online fitness videos used to be synonymous in my mind with Jane Fonda-style workouts: all lycra, toned bodies and forced cheerfulness. In other words, far too exhausting for me to try out. But since lockdown, I’ve had to find a way to balance all the non-stop snacking I’ve been doing and the fact that I only move 20 odd steps each day unless I navigate the human obstacle course outside. So a few times a week, I’ve been working out using free PopSugar and FitnessBlender routines on YouTube. Sure, it can be hellish (think endless jumping jacks) but it’s fun, too.
Yes, I have realised that I enjoy getting fit. I started off slow with short 15minute videos and have now graduated to longer ones. Sometimes, I even shun the modifications they recommend for beginners like me to attempt the more challenging moves. If I am not a sweaty mess by the end of it, I feel cheated. What I like most is that I can do all of this in private and no one can see how red my face is as I attempt my tenth bicycle crunch or how my frail arms are barely able to hold a plank. I can press pause and take a break whenever I want, unlike in a real class. If quarantine has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t need to drag myself to the gym, everything I need to get fit and healthy can be found in my own home. Now I just need to find an enthusiastic online instructor to help me give up cake. Ann
Lee