(Somewhat girly) reasons for keeping my HBO Nordic subscription

Summer travelling and a summer cold are two explanations for my lack of blogging of late, but if the truth be told I'm always lazy blogging-wise during my precious four-week summer holiday. At least my cold has given me an excuse for a fair amount of irresponsible TV watching. One modest goal has been to find reasons why I shouldn't cancel the subscription to HBO Nordic, which I only got in the first place because of Game of Thrones.

I admit I've always been a bit suspicious of HBO as it's the home of so many of those "must-see" series which I have no burning wish to watch: The Sopranos  (mafia in a domestic setting: apparently the guy dies); Six Feet Under (black humour in a funeral parlour); True Detective (truly depressed detectives solving truly depressing cases) and so on. Before my subscription, I'd tested Mad Men, which left me unimpressed, and The Wire, which I decided (to use the style of the script) was not my fucking cup of fucking tea. To sum up, I had reason to believe that this channel's image was a bit too edgy for the likes of me, and that I'd have been better off with an ABC Nordic subscription, if such a thing had existed.

However, it's really cheap. Also, the latest news on The Gilded Age, the new costume drama by Julian "Downton" Fellowes which has been an age in the making, is that it's been snapped up by HBO. When it finally airs (and I was probably over-optimistic in thinking it would be this year), I will want to see it as soon as possible, without having to wait for Swedish telly to air it or for the DVD box set - knowing as I do from my Once Upon a Time experiences how long that can take. And so, the hunt is on for HBO series that aren't too dark or too twisted. It's not that I expect sunshine all the way, I'd just rather be without a surfeit of dead kids or jokes involving making up stiffs so they look nice. Please?

Staying away from the ponderous historical dramas which I suspect are there to fill the Game of Thrones gap, as they seem really po-faced, I've managed to unearth three series which form a good enough excuse to keep on paying for HBO - for now:

Big Little Lies I started to watch this series because I expected enjoyable rich-bitch infighting in luxurious venues, but got something else - and was pleasantly surprised by it. Settings like a wealthy US East Coast town and characters like the yummy mummies who live there are usually the starting point of satire, but this series takes its protagonists seriously and sympathises with their trials. There is a surprising amount of female solidarity, and sometimes (not always) cat fights can be put to rest simply by the two combatants levelling with each other. I found myself warming to all the main female characters - meddling but loyal Madeline, fragile Celeste, tough newcomer Jane and the short-tempered hotshot Renata. Even Bonnie, introduced as the annoyingly perfect hippieish wife of Madeline's ex, turns out to have inner depths. A mildly addictive series which is also mildly depressing (the domestic violence plot line is pretty grim), but perked up by a sharp script and the characters' ability for survival.

Killing Eve I'm still not 100% sure about this series. It's apparently adapted from a book series about one of its protagonists, the female assassin with the code name Villanelle. She is very convincingly portrayed by Jodie Comer as a psychopath who takes an almost childish delight in her job, but once you know that's what Villanelle's all about, little that she does seems that interesting or shocking. The main reason I continue to watch is Sanda Oh's Eve, the agent who is set to hunt down Villanelle with very few resources and no official backing. I loved Sandra Oh's Christina in Grey's Anatomy - she's one of the reasons I kept watching that series for as long as I did - and she still has that enjoyably dry delivery as Eve. The script's good too. I'll finish season one and see how it goes.

Sex and the City I didn't watch this when I was younger because I suspected that I'd feel envious of the main characters both when it came to the sex part and the city part (the city in question being New York). And I probably would have. When I watched the very first episode and only laughed once, I thought "I'm too old for this". From episode two onwards, though, I started to enjoy this light-hearted sitcom more and more. It's not the least bit relatable to me - the four female leads all live in Manhattan, have glamorous jobs and get as much action as you'd expect from the title. But somehow it doesn't matter. It's restful with a TV programme where, unlike say in Big Little Lies, the stakes are never that high. No matter how many dating disasters the quartet goes through, there seems to be plenty more Manhattan bachelors on offer. It's blissfully unedgy escapism and ideal viewing for when you have a cold. Plus, I'm not that envious of the characters anymore - their lifestyle seems a bit exhausting. And the guys, though good-looking enough, lack that certain wow factor for me. Sour grapes, I suppose.