Such a great show, but difficult to classify. No drama, action or nailbites, no big belly laughs, more like smiles and chuckles. I was just a little happier after having watched most episodes.

Very few shows like that, but Ted Lasso actually reminded me a lot of NEX in how it made me feel.

• prohobo

  today at 8:54 AM

  Just started watching Widow's Bay, which to me has a similar vibe, but a much better hook: folk horror as the plot driver.

  I can't watch Northern Exposure anymore. It's too alienated from the modern world, it feels like an artifact from a different civilization rather than anything I can relate to now, which is sad.

• ZeroGravitas

  today at 6:38 AM

  The Detectorists might fill this same niche.

• lupire

  yesterday at 8:40 PM

  Soap opera of people being nice

• snozolli

  today at 6:15 AM

  I don't know if it quite meets the criteria, but I really enjoyed Lodge 49, particularly after watching awful people doing awful things in Succession. I've also enjoyed everything that Steve Conrad has made, for similar feel-good reasons.

• rzzzt

  yesterday at 8:58 PM

  Rick is struck by a satellite falling out of the sky, no action?!

  • wowczarek

    yesterday at 9:26 PM

    They had to make openings in the coffin because it "fused with the body". Adam and Eve, Chris' ramblings and this.

• shadowtree

  today at 1:28 AM

  Picket Fences was similar to that, an early David E Kelley show (after LA Law).

  Some of that weirdness was then further carried over by Kelley to Ally McBeal and Boston Legal.

  Utter products of their time periods 90s and early aughts.

Find the German or UK international DVD release for original music. Region 1 DVDs have replacement music for licensing reasons, and it changes the show for the worse.

One of my favorite shows.

• keane

  yesterday at 11:43 PM

  This is a whole thing tracked by r/northernexposure — apparently the version that was until recently included with Prime had maybe ~80% of the original music. And https://moosechick.com/ claims that the UK Blu-rays have all the original songs. More discussion at https://reddit.com/r/northernexposure/search/?q=music

This show's use of music really made it magical

One of my favorite scenes: https://vimeo.com/151017533

• perilunar

  today at 7:33 AM

  Loved that scene!

  Makes me want to find all the old LEDs from broken kids toys and Christmas lights and wire them all up to a power supply...

Well I was excited to talk about how Sasha and Digweed produced one of the greatest prog house mixes of all time, but ... I suppose I now have another show to add to my to-watch list.

• TFNA

  yesterday at 9:53 PM

  I thought the same before I did the math: 2015 − 25 means too early for that 1996 release. But describing Sasha & John Digweed’s Northern Exposure as “progressive house” feels anachronistic, and Sasha at least is known to dislike that label (IIRC, he said something along the lines of “The term was made up by a wanker who didn’t even like the music.”)

  • stuxnet79

    yesterday at 10:27 PM

    No artist likes to have a marketing label attached to their work, even though it helps with branding. So I'm not surprised that Sasha wasn't a fan of the term.

    But both him and Digweed did pioneer a unique sound in the 90s. The "Sasha and Digweed sound" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Out of the multitude of admittedly not so great labels you could attach to the mixes they put out at the height of their careers, "progressive house/trance" seems to me to be the least offensive.

    I'm wondering what alternative you would suggest?

• nntwozz

  yesterday at 10:38 PM

  Ha! Same.

  Northern Exposure Expedition 1999 is my fave.

  Mono Culture - Free - Northern Exposure Expeditions

  https://youtu.be/VPaebmeL4Y4

  To do what I want to do

  To say what I want to say

  To be what I want to be... free

  • slyall

    today at 2:31 AM

    One of my favorite tunes ever is from Northern Exposure: Expeditions

    The Silence by Mike Koglin

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHDdM_0sotY

    Yeah, I was/am a Depeche Mode fan

I used to date a girl from Anchorage. She said that this show was for, "interesting and thoughtful people".

It didn't work out between us, but decades later, I keep trying this show to see if it's for me. I feel like one day it might be, if I'm in just the right place.

Northern Exposure is the otherside Twin Peaks. Hits the same comfy note just at the opposite spectrum.

• simplicio

  today at 3:27 AM

  Both shows were filmed around the same time and place in WA state and, as you note, had a kinda similar surrealist vibe. Which made watching them togeather kind of strange. Like Joel and his friends adorable hijinks were happening just down the street from a brutal murder investigation.

• nephihaha

  today at 12:09 AM

  I had the same thought. Like its friendlier younger sister. I think Twin Peaks fans realised early on the main point of the show wasn't so much who killed Laura Palmer, but the weird and wonderful characters in the place. Northern Exposure doesn't really have a One-eyed Jacks or a Bob... But it does have a Bigfoot character that could be right out of it.

  • magarnicle

    today at 2:27 AM

    I'm not so sure about that assessment of Twin Peaks. Look at the back half of season 2, where the "weird and wonderful characters" become the focus of the show. It's barely watchable.

    When Lynch came back for the final episode of that season he refocused it on Laura Palmer and brought back characters that hadn't been seen for many episodes, like Laura's mum or Audrey's brother. They weren't much fun, one being wracked by grief and the other mentally disabled. But that's what Twin Peaks is really about and what gave it staying power.

    Everyone (including Diane Keaton when she directed an episode) seemed to think it was this kooky place and the weirdness was the point. There's plenty of fun there, but Lynch really understood it: hence Season 3 which gives you all of half an episode of Fun Dale Cooper before pulling the rug out from under you and reminding you that a girl was murdered and we shouldn't move on from that.

    • jfengel

      today at 2:34 AM

      I got the impression at the time that Lynch was figuring it out as he went along. Some days that worked; some days it really didn't but mostly carried through on the strength of its performances.

      I admit I haven't seen it since the original airing. I would likely evaluate it differently now.

    • nephihaha

      today at 7:35 AM

      Series 2 did overfocus on the characters, but the eccentric characters were there at the beginning. Log Lady was the most outlandish but Pete Martell and Audrey Horne get introduced early on and are quirky. Dale Cooper himself is pretty strange.

      I always thought the most boring major character in Twin Peaks was James Hurley, the would be biker.

      I never watched the third series. I think I got part way through the first episode and never bothered with the rest.

As many shows or films from that period the title was "customized" in Poland and "Northern Exposure" was known as "Przystanek Alaska" - "Station Alaska". My dad enjoy it especially credits with moose.

• Sharlin

  today at 7:48 AM

  In Finland it was Villi pohjola - "The Wild North"

Filmed in Roslyn, WA - https://movielandmarks.com/#lm-1003

This was one of my mother’s favourite shows and we all watched it together as a family when I was a kid. I really enjoyed it too.

About 10 years ago I bought the DVDs for my mother for her birthday and we watched some together, it really stood the test of time if you ask me.

She died last year, I’m glad we got the chance to share this and a few other nostalgic things over the past few years, we lived quite a long way away.

Call your mother!

I had forgotten Northern Exposure existed for 30 years until remembering it recently, and discovering that i had very fond memories of watching it on Irish tv as a teenager. There was something different about it, definitely going to watch it again

I read it was partly inspired by "Local Hero" (Bill Forsyth movie). The visiting Russian singer felt like a direct lift of the visiting Russian fisherman in "Local Hero".

• n1b0m

  today at 3:55 AM

  Yes it was :) I watched Local Hero after watching Northern Exposure and couldn’t shake the feeling that the visiting Russian felt eerily familiar. A little research revealed that Local Hero was a favourite of Northern Exposure writer Joshua Brand.

The show has its moments - mature, intelligent, human moments found little elsewhere - but its an intelligence that struggles to escape very typical network sitcom trappings. One wishes it had gone a little more in the direction of M.A.S.H. and ditched the pretense of having to make jokes every minute.

My 9th grade history teacher showed us S3E6 "The Body in Question" and it really stuck with me all the way through being an important part of my college thesis basically. I never actually watched any other episodes but I still think about Pierre and the distinction between truth and fact a lot.

The two leads, Rob Morrow and Janine Turner, are doing a rewatch podcast called Northern Disclosure. They seem to be in season 3 right now. No endorsement, haven't tried it myself.

• justinator

  today at 4:38 AM

  Does Janine Turner reflect upon her time playing a strong independent woman who owned her own business in a male dominated field while being friends with an indigenous population? Because Janine Turner is... different.

Jessie the Bear episode, it ends with Enya's "Carribran Blue", is "The Constant" of the 90s.

- I looked it up season 3 episode 18 "The Final Frontier".

When "Resident Alien" came out, we started watching it and I quipped to my wife, "oh, so this is 'Northern Exposure', but the out of touch, out of towner doctor pressed into small town service, constantly scheming to get out, is more likeable."

• jfengel

  today at 2:36 AM

  I really wanted to like Resident Alien, but it just didn't do it for me. I like the comparison to Northern Exposure; it's very astute.

  But somehow, I really just wanted Tudyk to start killing everyone.

• nephihaha

  today at 12:04 AM

  There is a touch of Mork and Mindy to Resident Alien too. But yes, I do see a bit of Northern Exposure in Resident Alien, and in Due South which popped along a few years later...

  And a touch of Twin Peaks in Northern Exposure itself.

  • mrexroad

    today at 2:37 AM

    Due South… now there’s a name I have not heard in many years.

    Youth in the 90’s had all sorts of quirky content available and we had enough free time to consume it all while doing a lot of nothing along the way (in a good way).

    • nephihaha

      today at 7:43 AM

      I was reminded of Due South a few years ago, because I was visiting someone who was watching it. Nowhere near as bizarre as TP or Northern Exposure, but it was there. Twin Peaks definitely opened the way for less formulaic material.

      Even Malcolm in the Middle had some quirky Alaskan side plot with one of the brothers going over there and marrying a native woman.

That piano trebuchet!

One of my favorite shows, was happy to see it finally come to streaming a few years ago, came later than a lot of other older shows from the same time period.

Never heard of this. I thought it was going to be about the Sasha and Digweed album. https://www.discogs.com/release/36165-Sasha-And-John-Digweed...

I always felt this show was Twin Peaks' less menacing younger sister. It was mainly character driven, and those characters were very memorable (and mostly, but not always, lovable.)

There were some problems with it. The representation of the countryside as a magical other by city folk. The strange lack of families in Cicely (there are children but hardly any). I found the on-off relationship between the two leads to be more frustrating than exciting.

cle ellum, wa

• incanus77

  yesterday at 9:17 PM

  Rosyln.

  • shawn_w

    yesterday at 10:04 PM

    Roslyn and Cle Elum are next to each other.

    • sleepybrett

      yesterday at 11:09 PM

      basically the same town. I think i'm in some episodes in the background of the bar. My friend used to go to a nearby university (CWU in Ellensburg) and went to visit him and we were grabbing pizza down the street from the bar they shot in (the brick saloon) and we got asked to be extras.