Julia

_Julia_ is a comfy show, albeit not one with as much substance as it would like to claim. The portrayal of Julia feels a little hollow, as she's perpetually disarmingly charming and almost naïve in her pursuits. We never really get to know what makes her tick or what about her drove her to become a TV pioneer. There's also a tendency to put roadblocks in her way that are caricatural at best, and rely a lot on white men being assholes to women. They even did poor Paul dirty for a while, which is really sad considering how supportive and adoring the real-life Paul Child was of his wife. Ah, but it kind of comes together in the end. And there are plenty of genuine, heartfelt moments that feel earned to make it a pleasant watch. The show kind of wore its welcome in the end, but it was short enough that I didn't mind too much.

[HBO Max] A charming series, much more transcendental than it seems, that also addresses, albeit in a shallow way, the social revolutions of the sixties, through the figure of Julia Child, a pioneer of cooking shows but which at the same time seemed to keep the tradition of the wife in the kitchen. Extraordinary work by Sarah Lancashire that extracts doses of humanity from a unique character.