Little House on the Prairie

You can tell things have started to get really bad by the fact that they’re bringing back Little House on the Prairie. When a society is in serious crisis – or so I’ve read – it no longer needs edgy, transgressive, exciting art to push boundaries and challenge assumptions. Rather, it needs to be soothed and cosseted with bland, undemanding and familiar comfort food. Nothing, not even The Waltons, does that quite like Prairie. People griping about the remake have clearly forgotten how dire the original was I may well have gawped uncritically at quite a few of the original series’ 200-odd episodes, the first of which aired in 1974.