It’s hard to express how giddy I felt when I heard about the return of Virgin River. I’m a latecomer to the show, which launched on Netflix in 2019, but I indecently binged all three seasons over the Christmas omicron wave, while housesitting with only two elderly and incontinent dogs for company. Over 10 days I watched so much of the shamelessly cheesy Netflix soap-masquerading-as-drama that I truly started to consider moving to a small Californian mountain town, where I would jovially participate in lumberjack themed sports days and perhaps fall in love with the brooding owner of a river-side bar.
I’m not the only one who has had such plaid-clad fantasies. When I first admitted to a friend I had been watching this fabulously trashy show, they immediately told me that they were obsessed with it too. More and more devotees started crawling out of the woodwork, until it seemed like everybody I knew was a huge fan, but hadn’t quite got the guts to reveal it in public. You see, Virgin River is by no means prestige television. Depicting the strangely dramatic life of a small, isolated American community, it doesn’t doesn’t have the slickness of Succession, the wisecracks of Better Call Saul, or the big budget brashness of Stranger Things. It’s cosy, and homely, and despite occasional attempts at scandal, makes Call The Midwife look edgy. That said, it’s endlessly charming. A Hallmark movie with soul, Virgin River is perfectly comfortable in its own skin, which is perhaps why it’s developed such a dedicated following.
