Of all my DVD collection (as I like to barbarically write it: DVDs, it even sounds dirty), once the size of a video store, only a few remain. Streaming has taken movies and records out of the house, leaving more room for books, but I’ve kept a few samples, like pardoned flawed ninots from burning. One of those is the case with the complete Doctor in Alaska series, and I’m glad to know I can take it to the clean point as well, or where the heck waste of nostalgia gets recycled.
Thanks to Filmin and the Enfamilia channel (from AMC) bringing the series back, my new year begins to look to the past and not the future, which is a great consolation against inflation, Putin, the new self-employment quota and even the elections , fights to come. I can defend myself against all of this by curling up in a ball in a remote Alaskan town, in the warmth of some of the characters who served as teachers in my sentimental upbringing. And it was an arduous upbringing: TVE broadcast it on La 2 at irregular times. Not only did you have to stay up all night, but you also had to pay attention to the capricious moment of broadcasting, which almost never coincided with the announced time, and guess where the plot, because the programmers were so careless that they didn’t bother to release the episodes in order. And yet, no matter how hard they made it for us, a bunch of sleepless kids have come to life with this bunch of free characters for accepting their fate. Those who understood this paradox met their fears better than those who went to sleep. In Spain, Doctor in Alaska was a constellation of 625-line, low-volume televisions turned on in darkened rooms in front of lonely teenagers, unaware they shared a secret.
We have to thank Jaume Ripoll, Filmin’s railing, for this gift from Kings that he is giving us.
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