PBS Passport is the only streaming service I need

This coming Sunday evening, May 4, Miss Austen, a four-part series highlighting the bond between the novelist Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra, will premiere on public television.

Being a huge Janeite, I’m thrilled. After the first episode, those of us who have PBS Passport — which comes with a $60 annual contribution to WTTW or your local PBS station — will be able to stream the other three episodes at our leisure.

Passport is the only streaming service I pay for. I’m out of the loop during conversations about programs on other platforms, but Passport is enough for me. 

This year I rewatched on Passport all five seasons, 34 episodes, of one of my two all-time favorite PBS dramas, All Creatures Great and Small, adapted from James Herriot’s books about his life as a veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dales. My other favorite, Call the Midwife, featuring a group of lay and religious midwives in London’s impoverished East End, has presented a whopping 123 episodes in 14 seasons, and I’ve watched them all at least twice. (Unfortunately, only the current season is still on Passport. Previous ones are on Netflix. Other streaming services have picked up popular PBS dramas like Downton Abbey.)

Arts critic Moira Macdonald wrote about both All Creatures Great and Small and Call the Midwife this year, saying that they are the television shows that we need now because they embody kindness and dignity in our turbulent times. Neither series is sappy and escapist, however. Serious issues like poverty, death, interpersonal tensions, physical and mental illness, violence and war are not avoided — indeed, issues of the times supply the plotlines — but overlaying any hardship is the message of human beings taking care of one another.

For people who prefer grittier drama, Passport is rife with crime series from around the globe. I like Grantchester, Unforgotten, Annika, and Ridley from the UK; Vienna Blood, a joint British-Austrian production; and Astrid from France. Some of my friends recommend lighter mysteries like the Australian productions Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and My Life Is Murder.

History buffs enjoy period dramas like Wolf Hall and Victoria. Many of the drama programs are imports — turn on captions — but drama is only a fraction of the Passport fare. There are news, public affairs, science, nature, music, arts, food, travel, documentary, children’s, and how-to programs, and most of these are US productions. Chicagoans can revel in our city in programs like Chicago Stories and Chicago Tours with Geoffrey Baer. Favorites like Antiques Roadshow, Finding Your Roots, This Old House, and Rick Steves’ Europe offer dozens, maybe hundreds, of past programs. You won’t find sports — unless you’re interested in Ken Burns’s Baseball — but there is little else missing.

For the record: WTTW did not pay me to write this post.

It’s a shame that I feel compelled to end on a gloomy political note. In April the Trump administration announced that it will try to revoke the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s congressionally approved funding of PBS and National Public Radio because of “leftist news” and “cultural indoctrination.” Public broadcasting has other funding sources, including donors, but the CPB has said that many member stations would be devastated by a loss of federal funds. So, here’s another subject for an anti-Trump message to your representatives.