As I try to escape coronavirus-filled reality, all I want is monsters and aliens

In the weeks and months after my kids were born, I couldn’t tolerate watching violence on television. I sought out the softest, lamest shows around. I watched multi-season family dramas in which people yelled at one other, broke down, stormed off, then came back, reconciled and broke down again. I did two seasons of Midsomer Murders, the winsome drama that began in the late 1990s, and dug up prestige BBC shows from a decade earlier – the kind in…