In my latest #LIHerald column, I look back at the wonderful and wondrous TV series “Northern Exposure.”
In the interior of Washington state, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, there is a tiny city, population about 900, that I have long wanted to visit — Roslyn.
There are no vacation amenities in this place — it is a seemingly ordinary American city, with a handful of eateries and shops and one hole-in-the-wall radio station along its single weatherworn main street. From 1990 to 1995, however, Roslyn was the stand-in for the fictional Cicely, Alaska, in the CBS cult classic “Northern Exposure,” an Emmy Award-winning series that, to my mind, is the finest comedy-drama ever produced, mixing medicine with literature, history, philosophy, religion, music —oh, so much music — and magic to conjure up an idealized version of small-town America.
Yes, the denizens of this very out-of-the-way place disagree and argue — and argue some more — but despite their differences, whether they be spiritual, political or socio-economic, folks seek to understand one another on a deep, existential level, and in the end, they do.
That’s why, I believe, so many viewers love this show, worship it, really, including my wife and me. We discovered “Northern Exposure” in 1993, when we arrived in the U.S. after I had served for two years in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria, where Katerina was born and raised, and we instantly fell in love with it.
Five years ago, I bought the six-season DVD set of the show for Katerina as an anniversary gift, and we set it aside, thinking we would eventually watch and rewatch the show’s 110 episodes, but we never found the time. Then the coronavirus pandemic struck, and it forced us to slow down. Sequestered at home in the early weeks of the crisis, we started watching the series from its start and found solace in this endearing show, which was best described by one reviewer as “esoteric utopian.”
You can read the whole column here.
