This Is The Year I Understood TV Series Can Be Discovered Like Books....Years Later...By Accident....in A Flash

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I should have of course realised this earlier in the year. When on returning from hospital in Essex when my mother was unwell I would ping a microwave meal as was too bothered to watch anything else. Slump in front of the TV and surf any channel until the moment I discovered Bones. Slowly I was hooked even though it was a twelve year old series that had finished the year before. There I was though watching repeats on a remote channel and very late to the party. But in the party I was.

Thing is. When I was child there was just three channels (Yes I'm that old). So you had a good chance of seeing all of the latest series for a couple of episodes and making a decision on whether you wanted to continue. Nowadays however with the gazillion and one channels available even if you have every pay TV channel available plus Netflix and Amazon Prime most people still do not have the time to look at every available series.

So what that means is that rather like books there is now a greater chance that TV series can be discovered by accident.....which leads me to The Flash.

Daughter had series one on DVD and asked whether I wanted to watch it. As it was raining outside (the British summer at last!) and as I'd nothing better to do I said yes, though grudgingly. I was aware of the show though I'd avoided it given that this first series started in 2014 and I was then forty nine.

The other reason why I was so reluctant was that I remembered the reading the comic (now called graphic novels....please) as a child and I was at best neutral. I mean he could run fast. So what?Hardly Spiderman now is it?

Well...I loved it.

The plot is simple. Barry Allen is struck by lightening and with the help of others becomes The Flash in which he fights various super villains. Obviously more complicated than that but I don't want to spoil it for you.

Part of the reason I think why I liked it was that it television form it seemed to capture what the best American DC and Marvel comics could do which was to mix the realistic with the fantastic. You believe in the world you're seeing.

It is basically a comic book on screen. And (though this is the varifocal lens of my memory) it's better than the original comic.

It's also helped by some familiar screen faces. Jesse L Martin as the police detective and surrogate father to Barry was part of the Law team when Law and Order was in it's prime when he partnered with Jerry Orbach. Tom Cavanagh was also in Ed. A favourite of mine in the quiet humorous hometown style of Gilmore Girls.

If it was a choice between Bones and the Flash Bones would always win. But for a few moments escapism in the mad place called Britain right now you could do a lot worse.

Until the next time.