All Creatures Great and Small on PBS

Which one - All Creatures or Anne?

I guess triggering isn't the right word - maybe *very uncomfortable* is more like it!

That's cool - on a side note, wondering if you might have any recommendations, then, since my daughter (13) and I love both of these. Anne with an E had parts she couldn't watch (the flashbacks, some more of the violence) but All Creatures is fine - she's highly sensitive.

But even she noticed that all these people have relationship issues - haha! That's what I meant by "triggering" - I think they are frustrating my more AP parts! 

Without spoiling anything - we are only on Season 2 - yiikes! Everytime a character -- Tristan, Siegfried, James, even Miss Hall encounters someone they like, they sabotage it or run away or act not interested <--- that's mostly the part I was calling triggering. I don't know if it's more b/c I identify with that and it's a little painful or other people have done that to me. 

And SPOILER ALERT

I can see James was trying to be a gentleman with Helen - esp considering she's betrothed and all - but even after she calls things off, he still doesn't seem to step forward and it's frustrating. 
Siegfried and Dorothy have CLEAR chemistry - and then he goes and starts dating someone else?!


I get that it's a show - but they seem to be doing a great job at creating a lot of FA characters, lol.

Agreed tnr9 The “drama” genre.

It is why I don’t watch romantic movies….but it is in all forms of entertainment.

"Secure" drama has to be driven by external events and not by relationship miscommunication. You can still make that interesting, but you need a very interesting backdrop to build the story against, which can be more challenging to write.

But I think part of the focus on insecure characters is related to who the writers actually are. If you look into the background of (not all but) a lot of Hollywood families (and having multiple generations of the same family stay in the business is pretty common), they often have pretty chaotic personal backgrounds. Wikipedia is always interesting for seeing golden age Hollywood actors just getting married 5 times throughout their lives, battling with addictions (likely self-medicating), having lots of kids with half siblings navigating divorce and blended families and step-families who then go into the business too. And it's not limited to acting, it's writers, it's producers, it's a lot of creatives. And it's part of why they're drawn to the entertainment industry, they write or act out what they know or what they're trying to work out in their own lives, often they're seeking validation, and it all seems very normalized to them with lots of others in that space experiencing similar dynamics and dysfunction.

This results in good entertainment for people who like the intrigue and understand these character relationships full of fear and bad communication are not actually healthy or good to emulate. But the trap for the unaware insecure viewer is not knowing that, since it makes dysfunction seem more normal, and then potentially idealizing toxicity even further in the case of romantic movies.

seeking
There are movies, Series representing some secure attatcment or how to deal with things in a secure way

Parenthood (recommended by Diana Poole Heller)
Lion
The bonus family (based on bonus families struggles in Sweden) - one of the children has got adhd and also his dad but all of them are challenged in their second marriage or as singles and you watch how they navigate through their challenges (it is on Netflix in most countries)

There are more …but I can’t remember right now