When I began in journalism, writing freelance for one of my hometown newspapers – see, that tells you it was a long-ass time ago: we had two newspapers – I wrote all of my articles and movie reviews and other stuff on a portable typewriter and, later, on a Brother word processor. I hand-delivered hard copies of the articles to the newsroom.

I got to know the editors and reporters there, so after college, I got offered a full-time job. By the time I was working full time, the newspaper had a primitive word-processing system, not connected to the internet, but still better than typewriters.

I still remember when i was bringing my freelance pieces there some of the older people in the newsroom who banged away on manual typewriters. There was one old guy in particular who brought his two fingers down on the typewriter keyboard so hard it sounded like hammer falls.

I wrote a lot of pieces on my portable manual typewriter, which is still stored someplace. It was a constant companion: Because I was writing movie reviews, and my friends and I were seeing a lot of movies, I would take it along when we were all going out and write my review at a friend’s house after we got back from the theater.

It’s been decades since I’ve used a manual typewriter and would not trade my MacBook Pro for any number of typewriters. I wrote and edited books and many, many articles sitting on a folding chair or at my kitchen counter in recent years, but that was all done on the Mac laptop. It matters much less where I’m sitting and what I’m using for a desk than what I’m writing on.

I can’t imagine writing on a manual typewriter now, with all that balkiness and all the laborious corrections on paper. I know some people do it, but that’s not for me. I much prefer modern-day writing tools.

Having said that, when I ordered business cards a few years ago, I asked for an old-time typewriters motif in the background, behind my name and email address. I was ridiculously pleased with how they came out.

But I’d rather have one of those old beauties on my biz cards than have to work on one.

I guess what most people think of when they hear the title “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” is the 2005 film starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as a couple who mutually discover that the other is a spy, face off against each other and ultimately fight together to survive and save their marriage.

It’s not until very late in the eight episodes of the Amazon Prime Video “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” series that John (Donald Glover) and Jane (Maya Erskine) find themselves in that standoff. But there’s a lot of mutual tension and distrust between the two before that point.

I mean, marriage is tough enough, but if you’re both spies? Hella tough.

So there are some similarities between the movie (and an even earlier TV series) and the new series, but they’re mostly superficial: married spies but not a lot more.

The new series, created by Francesca Sloan and Glover, sets up the Smiths in a bizarre blind date: Each applies for a job with some unspecified spy agency. What they only begin to realize is that along with the intrigue comes a relationship: marriage and cohabitation and learning to trust each other with, literally, their lives.

(There’s a prologue to the series that shows an earlier John and Jane Smith, played by Alexander Skarsgard and Eliza Gonzalez, and we find out there are a lot of Smith agents out there, including a recurring duo played by Parker Posey and Wagner Moura.)

But most of the series’ episodes, which are mostly standalone and quite distinctive at the same time they service the ongoing subplot of will the Smiths survive and will their marriage survive, focus on the Smiths. Erskine is quirky and heartfelt and Glover is funny and flirty and how they clash in married life is a great counterpoint to how they clash and sync in their missions.

There’s no real way to compare this to “Pokerface” but I found myself thinking of that great series not only for its through-line of story but also for how each episode is distinctive in setting, tone and guest-starring actors. Here we get to see not only the divine Posey but also Paul Dano, John Turtorro, Billy Campbell, Sarah Paulson and, maybe my favorite, Ron Perlman as a man they must protect but who becomes a surrogate child for the Smiths. Believe it or not.

I’m not sure there will be a second season of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” I hope there will be, not only because of the need to follow up on the finale here but another chance to see Erskine and Glover work their murderous marital vibe again.

If you’ve been a fan of “Star Trek” as TV series, movies and concept as long as I have, there’s probably not a ton of surprises in “The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek.” But the 11-part documentary series, now streaming, is nevertheless mostly fun.

“The Center Seat” originally aired on the History Channel a couple of years ago – or at least three or four episodes aired. The rest never saw the light of day and the only on-demand episodes available were limited to those few episodes.

So it was cool to see the entire run of the show – which follows “Star Trek” from before “Star Trek” was even “Star Trek,” through the shows and movies and right up to and mostly including cursory looks at the current crop of shows in the franchise – appear on streaming services like Peacock and Amazon Prime Video. I reacquainted myself with the few episodes I’d seen and finished out the series.

Narrated by Gates McFadden, who has played Beverly Crusher since “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the series is a little glib in the fashion of “documentary” series like “The Movies Who Made Us,” which are quick-cut, “funny” looks at films. With those type of shows, the interviews are edited into three-second sound bites juxtaposed with clips and images to create mirth.

“The Center Seat” doesn’t do as much of that as some of these pop culture docs and the substance of the series is the behind-the-scenes interviews and analysis of the series. Don’t look for sit-downs with William Shatner or Avery Brooks, but there is substantial footage of a mid-2010s interview with Leonard Nimoy.

And the series gives us a good picture of the role Lucille Ball, sitcom pioneer and Hollywood businesswoman, played in “Star Trek.”

I’m enjoying the new “Zorro” series on Amazon Prime Video but it has prompted me to wonder about something: How do networks and streaming services create their subtitles and closed captions and why are they so different, sometimes, from the actual dialogue?

I’ve been watching most TV shows and movies with subtitles – when they’re available – for much of the past year now. Uneven sound mixes prompted me to do that, and while I still consider subtitles kinda distracting, they’re helpful in catching asides (as in series like “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” with rapid fire, often humorously-phrased dialogue) or series like the wonderful “Derry Girls,” where subtitles are handy to catch all the jokes.

But in keeping an eye on subtitles, I’ve noticed they often vary from the actual dialogue on screen. I’ve wondered if subtitling was done from a script or literally just what the people who write closed-captions can make out. The number of times a caption includes the phrase “unintelligible” makes me think it’s the latter.

And now comes “Zorro,” a Spanish TV production acquired by Prime Video that is obviously dubbed. But here’s the odd thing: The subtitling/captions frequently don’t match the dubbed dialogue.

The dubbed dialogue will be something like “Quickly, we must go outside,” and the subtitle will read something like, “Hurry – we need to catch up!”

So, close in spirit but not in details.

Other than that, the most egregious case of dialogue and captions that don’t match, “Zorro” is good fun so far.

I’ve always been a “Zorro” fan, having caught the original 1957 series starring Guy Williams in reruns. I’ve always loved how the original Johnston McCulley stories – which debuted in 1919 and were adapted into movies ranging from the Douglas Fairbanks silent movie in 1920 to the 1988 film staring Antonio Banderas – clearly influenced the early elements of the Batman comics, including secret lair (often hidden behind a fireplace or bookcase) black horse/Batmobile, preference for dispensing justice in old California with a sword or whip versus a gun, etc.

The new Zorro/Diego de la Vega is played by Miguel Bernardeau, with Renata Notni as Lolita, his headstrong romantic interest and, most intriguingly, Dalia Xiuhcoatl as a Native warrior who trained to succeed the old Zorro, who is ostensibly killed in the series’ opening scenes, along with Diego’s father.

“Zorro” has a cast of familiar characters, played by striking actors, with some interesting twists and additions. I’ll keep watching, with one eye on the subtitles and an ear out for the unmatching dialogue.

I generally like “end of the world” thrillers. I don’t even mind those with endings that leave me hanging. That’s probably why I liked “Leave the World Behind.”

About a year ago, I wrote a piece for Gutter Review, “Apocalypse Then: The Superiority of Bygone Disaster Films,” about how in general I thought classic end-of-the-world films like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “The World, the Flesh and the Devil” were better treatment of the kind of apocalyptic stories that were the currency of science fiction literature of the first 60 years of the 20th century than their modern counterparts.

So I went into “Leave the World Behind,” director Sam Esmail’s thriller for Netflix, kind of cautiously. What happens if I hated the film, which grew out of a production pact with Barack and Michelle Obama and starred a great cast, including Mahershala Ali, Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke? I’d hate to hate it.

No worries. The film, while long on set-up and short on “Panic in the Year Zero”-style payoff, is satisfying.

Actually, there’s a very contained version of “Panic” – released in 1962 and starring Ray Milland as a hard-nosed survivor leading his family group through the hours and days after nuclear war – in “Leave,” with the same kind of “I’m sure they’ll figure it out soon” vibe.

Added to that end-of-the-world flavor is a treatment of race and class. Roberts and Hawke play a New York City couple who, along with their kids, go for a weekend in the country to a luxurious house. They’ve barely settled in when the Internet goes out and the owner of the house (Ali) and his daughter show up. They’re unable to get to the city and need to stay over at their AirB&B. Roberts’ character is uptight and – much is made of this – hates people. Roberts’ reluctance to let the visitors move back into their own house is noted by Ali’s daughter, played by Myha’la.

Once accommodations are figured out, the next order of business is to connect with the outside world. There’s not as much “Panic”-style panic as in most movies of this type, but there is some meeting of the minds and meeting of the neighbors, a herd of deer.

There’s more made of a quest of the youngest (Farrah MacKenzie) to find the final episode of “Friends” streaming somewhere than a quest to answer what the hell is happening, and the most prominent theory, from a survivalist neighbor played by Kevin Bacon, is about as close as we get to an explanation – until the final shot.

“Leave the World Behind” is a prime example of the type of apocalyptic story that focuses on the point of view of the everyman-and-woman rather than “Deep Impact”-style deliberations by POTUS deep in the White House bunker. I like a good presidential speech summing up the disaster and urging people to remain calm as anybody, but this is a good change.

I have to admit I’m fascinated by death – which is probably understandable for a writer of true crime and crime fiction – but I’m especially fascinated by everything that follows death.

The picture above – forgive me for its “shot through glass” quality – is of a death crown, or angel crown. I’m writing a piece for CrimeReads about these bizarre artifacts of death, so I’ll save most of my explanation of death crowns for that, but I can tell that death crowns are a wreath, basically made of feathers from a feather pillow.

Folklore, especially Appalachian folklore, tells us that death crowns were found in the feather pillows of people who had recently died. I’ll tell you more in that upcoming CrimeReads article.

I’m not sure where my interest, even fascination, with death and funerals and cemeteries began. It probably had something to do with being exposed to so many funerals of extended family members when I was young. Complete with open caskets. It probably also had to do with the macabre stories and movies that I grew up on. I’ve written about that previously for CrimeReads.

Without quite realizing it, I’ve turned this interest in death into fodder for my fiction writing. I’ve written short stories about cemeteries and my crime novel “Seven Angels” is about a small town in Tennessee that was literally built around the graves of early 1800s settlers. The graveyard that is central to the story is based on my dad’s family graveyard down here in Tennessee. My main character is a woman who returns to the town of Seven Angels to help run her family’s funeral home and ends up as county coroner. The book won the Mystery Writers of America Hugh Holton Award for Best Unpublished Novel and I’m going to be working to get it out there in front of people in 2024.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get over my fascination with death and what follows, and I’m not sure I want to. It’s been more than a fascination for me. It’s been an inspiration.