With moving away from recapping every weekend and toward just talking about reading week by week – a change I still like – one side effect has been that I haven’t been sharing what I’ve been watching, listening to, making, etc. on a weekly basis. Which is a bit of a bummer, although not enough of a bummer to convince me to go back to the old format. So I thought I’d catch up seasonally instead, since I do watch and listen to some good stuff, and it’s fun to share and get recommendations. This isn’t an exhaustive list (and I’m leaving out some of the more kid-focused viewing, like “The Adventures of Tip and Oh,” which the kids and Steve are obsessively watching right now), but here’s a cross-section of what I’ve been watching over the summer of 2022 (with listening to come next week).

By far, the viewing highlight of the season has been James May: Our Man in Japan and James May: Our Man in Italy, on PrimeTV. For context, for years now, Steve has been a fan of Top Gear, the long-running show for (and about) car aficionados – he watched it first on BBC and later on Netflix (I think?) when the show transitioned over. Top Gear has never been my jam. Cars do nothing for me (other than get me from point A to point B) and I found the main host of the show off-putting. James May is another of the original three Top Gear hosts, and was always the one I could best tolerate watching. So when we were surfing around our streaming apps, looking for a non-European focused travel show to watch, and happened on James May: Our Man in Japan, it seemed like the stars aligning – a television personality Steve really likes, and a show on a subject that interested us both. You guys. It was absolutely HILARIOUS. Informative and beautifully filmed, yes, but also – HILARIOUS. Between all of the bonkers tour guides, James’ misadventures with language and physical comedy – the snowball fight! – and some seriously ridiculous robot shenanigans, we were laughing until we cried in almost every episode. As the episodes ticked down to the end of the series, we were bereft – until we discovered there was a new series dropping: James May: Our Man in Italy. We’re down to the final episode of that one, which we’re planning to watch with pasta and wine on Saturday night, and then I really don’t know what we’ll do with ourselves.

Not a new viewing experience, but a repeat – and a repeat we’ve repeated over and over – Penguins is my favorite Disneynature film (closely followed by the wonderful Dolphin Reef). Recently I actually got to decide what we were going to watch – a very rare treat – and given our postponed trip to Antarctica is now, finally, actually on the horizon… a visit with Steve and Adeline was just what I wanted. I’m happy to report that the jokes are as funny as ever, no matter how many times you watch this.

I’m not a big YouTube person – never have been – but there are a few channels that I like and follow. As a family, we follow Rock the Park and we re-watched a few episodes to prepare for our Dakotas and Wyoming road trip this month. (Many Jack and Colton references were made at Devils Tower, Custer State Park, and Badlands!) And on my own, I’m always up-to-date on Miranda Mills‘ channel for the best bookish chat (and just generally lovely, relaxing viewing) that I can find. Steve and the kids have no interest, but that’s fine – it’s nice having something just for me. 🙂

Finally, still on the agenda for this month is a re-watch of Chris and Meg’s Wild Summer, in which BBC nature presenters Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin go on an epic road trip around the U.K. in a fully electric campervan. Chris is Meg’s stepdad, and they have a cute, bantering relationship that is fun to watch on the BBC Springwatch suite of programs. Steve and I tried to watch Chris and Meg’s Wild Summer a few months ago – and we did technically watch every episode – but the kids were so wild and distracting (jumping on the couch, playing loudly right behind us, bickering, punching each other…) that we barely retained any of it. We’re keen to see what we missed and planning to watch after bedtime this round.

What have you been watching this summer? Any recommendations for me?