A NORTHERN NIGHT

The neighbours and I had agreed to have a Northern Exposure-themed night at the house, with recipes chosen from The Northern Exposure Cookbook. For those who’ve never seen it, the U.S. show ran from 1990 to 1995 and was an unexpectedly huge success for most of its six-season run. Inspired by Bill Forsyth’s fish-out-of-water film Local Hero, it followed the travails of Joel Fleischman, a recently graduated Jewish doctor from New York who must repay his medical school sponsorship by setting up his practice in the wilderness town of Cicely, Alaska.

Needless to say, our theme night felt truly and authentically Cicely-like (as in Cicely, Alaska). Skipping the formalities of eating at the table, this was a TV dinner experiment par excellence; starters (Maurice’s Spicy Chicken Wings) and dessert (Cherry Pie and New York Cheesecake) were prepared by my friends next door, and the main course was cooked by me.

Of course, I wanted to choose one of Adam the Chef’s classic recipes—possibly his Cumin Noodles, Szechuan Chicken, Pumpkin Tortelloni, or his iconic Zabaglione—but I could hear the grizzly man shouting at me in my head that I was in no position to assume I could do them justice. So, I opted instead for Ruth-Anne’s more humble lasagna recipe. Perhaps next time I’ll attempt something from Adam’s early days training at Le Cordon Bleu, or from his later period as an infantryman and part-time chef in Vietnam (famously witnessing the fall of Saigon while clarifying butter).

My guests and I had also agreed to choose an episode from Seasons 3–6 (believing Seasons 1–2 were already too familiar) and surprise one another with our selections, and I must say there was a surprising continuity between our choices. It proved that, as a television show, Northern Exposure was singularly unique in its ability to provide both individual-episode satisfaction and yet maintain a loose, long-arc narrative flow in depicting the comings and goings of the small town that sat at the heart of the “Alaskan Riviera.”

Much like life itself.

“Burning Down the House” from Season 3, “Ill Wind” from Season 4, and “Una Volta in L’Inverno” from Season 5 all dealt with themes of life, death, and creative purpose, as well as the fragile balance between chaos and renewal that defined so many of Northern Exposure’s episodes. Yet, as we all remarked, it seemed unique in being a show that didn’t require overt drama or conflict to propel its momentum and sustain the audience’s interest.

Our shared observation reminded me of that hilarious scene in Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, when Nicolas Cage (playing the aforementioned screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) attends a screenwriting seminar out of fear of writer’s block and gets shouted at by the mentor-lecturer Robert McKee (played by Brian Cox) for arguing the case for non–conflict-led storytelling in film and television. I once attended a similar event in London, led by a Hollywood filmmaking instructor named Doc Simmons, whose two-day film school had reportedly been attended by Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan; I resisted the urge to ask a similarly provocative question.

One of the main reasons my neighbours and I arranged our Northern Night was our recent shared enjoyment of the accompanying podcast for the show, Northern Disclosure, hosted by stars Rob Morrow and Janine Turner. The podcast has gained popularity due in part to a resurgence of interest in the series, owing to its being streamed on Amazon Prime. In one episode of the podcast, Barry Corbin, who plays Cicely’s right-wing patriarch, Maurice Minnifield, intimated that one of the later-season producers, David Chase, became increasingly frustrated with the show and its cosy formula—perhaps for the very reasons we all love it. Ironic, then, that Chase would later go on to create The Sopranos, groundbreaking for its tightly driven story arcs and sensational use of violence and profanity: the very opposite of the gentle, life-giving feel of Northern Exposure.

I’m not sure when, or if, we’ll do a Sopranos night, but for now, I’m happy to have heralded the start of autumn with a return to one of my favourite shows—complete with fire, good food, good company, and the comforting reminder that not everything needs to be a slave to narrative convention.

Northern Exposure was a true original in that way.