When I sat down to compose this piece about television, I was of the opinion that I’m a casual TV-viewer rather than a TV-viewing addict, seeing that I engage with the boob tube for an average of one and a half hours per day. That’s a fairly modest amount of time. As has happened frequently before, however, working on stories for Yeah, Another Blogger has led me, as if by magic, to discern the truth about things. Meaning, I now realize I’d go half-mad were my TV-watching privileges ever to be revoked. Anyway, what would I replace those hours with? Learning to crochet erotic hand puppets? Attempting to become one of the world’s best tiddlywinks players? Hell, I don’t even want to think about life without television, because I absolutely need TV. I’m addicted!

An ace dial-flipper, I regularly tune in to bits and pieces of news, sports, nature, cooking and late-night talk shows. I’m all by my lonesome when viewing the majority of those bits and pieces. What I catch the most of, by far, though, are scripted drama and comedy series. And I always watch them — in their entireties, unless we ditch them because we decide they suck — with my spouse Sandy. It’s one of our favorite things to do, for we have similar tastes in series fare. Let’s take a look at two shows that entertained Sandy and me recently.

Have you seen Adolescence, a British miniseries? It is a huge Netflix hit and has garnered a lot of media attention. Justifiably so. I place it in the pantheon of series, up there with The Queen’s Gambit, Anxious People, The Investigation and Call My Agent, to name but a few. Adolescence is really, really good.

Foremost among its explorations, Adolescence delves into the mind of Jamie Miller, a seemingly normal 13-year-old lad who, his insecurities enflamed by the taunts of a female classmate, loses all control and murders that young lady after meeting up with her one evening. The foul deed turns his life upside down and deeply damages the lives of the people who love him the most: his parents and older sister.

The show probes its subject matters with precision and honesty. The third episode hits especially hard. Set in the youth detention center where Jamie is being held, nearly all of its 52 minutes are devoted to a talk between Jamie and a court-appointed psychologist. The episode left Sandy and me shaken, so powerful and disturbing are Jamie’s words and actions as the session progresses. In my opinion, Adolescence is not to be missed. Its scripts are as tight as square knots, and each main member of the cast performs magnificently. First-time actor Owen Cooper, for example, is incredible as Jamie. Equally splendid is Stephen Graham, who not only plays Jamie’s father Eddie Miller, but co-created and co-wrote the production. What a talent he is. Adolescence, I believe, will stay in my mind for quite a while.

And then there’s the frothy Loot, a series that tips heavily into the wacky–as–hell category. Your life won’t be incomplete if you skip Loot, whose two seasons are available on Apple TV+. If you decide to tune in, however, you might end up digging it as much as Sandy and I did. It’s light, but it’s also refreshing.

Maya Rudolph shines in Loot, her comedic and dramatic talents fully on display. The show centers around her character, Molly Wells, who goes ballistic when she discovers her husband John has been cheating on her. She loses no time in divorcing him. The dissolution sends Molly reeling. She’s in pain. She’s also unimaginably wealthy, to the tune of over 100 billion American dollars, her share of the assets she and John, a tech industry genius, had jointly owned.

What to do with all that dough? Well, Molly, spoiled but possessing a heart of gold, doesn’t go for the usual approach of attempting to become even richer. Instead, she opts to give it all away, to groups and social causes that will better the human condition. The conduit for her generosity becomes the Wells Foundation, a do-good organization Molly founded while married but then totally forgot about until after the divorce came through.

I’m going to leave it at that, except to note that crazy situations have no trouble finding and enveloping Molly and her Wells Foundation employees, and that I laughed my ass off at some of the lines tossed out by the actors.

Till next time, boys and girls! If you have any series recommendations, please let me know. Sandy and I always are on the prowl for viewing options.