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RE :”I believe that was my original point - that I preferred watching nothing at all, at the particular time - along with pointing out that the family were “Tudors” rather than “Tutors.”

Actually I called it ‘The Tudor’ which you corrected, not 'Tutors'. But its a funny thought.

I like occasional short segments graphical realism in drama movies. But here's one I couldn't sit through : 'The Passion....'. That movie was obsessed with torture/sadism, hours of it. There is no way it was like that in real life. Artistic freedom I guess. I wouldn't enjoy that in any movie.

I have not seen “The Passion” - my mother did, and reported that I wouldn’t like it - although I can’t say how the depiction compares to what actually happened to Jesus, because I wasn’t at the original events. I do not enjoy graphic violence in movies of any kind. Even “The Lost Battalion” is a little much for me, but I just wander to the kitchen or laundry room during the ickiest parts because it’s so good overall.

I think there is a lot of well-done tv programming. I’ve seen all (I think) of the extremely numerous episodes of “Midsomer Murders,” all of “Foyle’s War” and “Rosemary and Thyme,” the “Sherlock Holmes” productions with Jeremy Brett and “Poirot” with David Suchet. Good plots, good writing and lots of elegant historical styling in the shows that don’t have a contemporary setting.

I don’t know what people with babies that stay up all night did to avoid going nuts when they didn’t have television, or at least radio. When my Tom, who is now 15, was an infant, I watched “South Pacific” every night for weeks on “American Movie Classics” and memorized all the songs and most of the dialogue. Last night I started watching “The Forsyte Saga,” a late-Victorian costume-drama miniseries from the 1980s, as I bounced Kathleen until after midnight. The tiresomely conventional Soames Forsyte shtupps his freethinking wife under the blankets ;-), while she stares at the ceiling in a bored way.