I'm greatly enjoying Call The Midwife (available on Netflix streaming). As I cross middle age, I find I have less and less patience for hearing the same stories over and over again, and the first thing I look for is originality. Most movies, TV shows, comic books, and genre fiction have become so repetitive and predictable. (They probably always were, but it took 40 years of consumption to really notice.) For instance, is Downton Abbey really all that different from Upstairs Downstairs? But Call the Midwife is a story I have simply never heard before set in place and time (1950s London's East End) I've never seen a story done before.

On top of that, this series manages to be dramatic without setting up cartoon bad guys. All the characters are complex and real and imperfect, but there aren't any villains here. I suppose the pimps in Episode 2 count as villains, but they're barely on the screen at all. Ultimately it's an interesting story about life and people.