Quite a few months ago, someone at Stephen’s store recommended a Netflix offering that ran on Turkish television from 2011 to 2014, called ‘Muhteşem Yüzyıl’ (‘The Magnificent Century’).  Grand title aside, it’s a soap opera.

The series fictionalizes palace intrigue during the reign of ‘Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent’.  The recommendation, as it turns out, was based on ‘you must see the costumes’ and not much more.  And yet…

Now, whereas I contend — and can never be persuaded otherwise — that male beauty in every aspect reached its zenith in John F. Kennedy, Jr., there are other extremely attractive men in the world, including the actor portraying Süleyman in this show, Halit Ergenç.

Every so often for the last number of months, we will have watched an episode or two (there are 48, we’re at 37), during which it was de rigueur to say out loud two and three times: ‘Now that’s a good-looking man!’

The show is terrible, and the actress in the female lead, Meryem Uzerli, is so wonderfully terrible that we have taken to imitating her delivery expressing this or that emotion around the house.  Stephen has her down, but the character itself is the ideal of petulance and willfulness, so it’s really not that much of a leap.

I will deny having said that.