Christmas TV

As I ended up with that dreadful cold on the 26th, I watched a good bit of Netflix over the following week. Not a bad way to end the Christmas holidays

• The Crown: we'd already started watching this series about Queen Elizabeth II's early years as the monarch, but we binge-watched the final episodes. I read somewhere that this TV series is the best PR the British Royal family could get. It was fascinating. And very sympathetic towards Elizabeth - how she had to let go of her normal life to become an institution, how everyone seemed to have their own agenda that they wanted to force on her: the prime minister and the government, her private secretary, her grand-mother, her mother, the Church, her husband, her sister. A really interesting period in history. And the dresses are gorgeous too! Excellent performance by Claire Foy, who played Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall!

• The OA: I don't know why The OA has been compared to Stranger Things? No cute kids. No monster from another dimension. Just a young woman who disappeared seven years ago. And she reappears. And she's no longer blind. And she won't tell her parents or the FBI what happened. But she comes across 5 misfits from the local school, and she starts telling them her strange story. And what a story it is. I love Brit Marling. She always comes up with interesting projects, like Another Earth. And of course, a perfect cliff hanger at the end of Season 1!