TV Review: Virgin River, Seasons 1-3. Netflix.

This popular series was initially a promising discovery on Netflix. We saw Season 1, which was released on Netflix in 2019, early in 2020, and then saw Season 2 when it was released late in the same year. This series is based on a book series of the same name by Robyn Carr.

The premise for the show is that Mel Monroe, an attractive youngish nurse practitioner and midwife from Los Angeles with a tragic personal backstory (played appealingly by Alexandra Breckenridge), takes a one-year job in a remote northern California town, working with a curmudgeonly 72-year old doctor who has the only medical practice in town.

This doesn't turn out to be an easy adjustment for anyone, but in the course of her trying to fit into the rural community, we slowly find out a lot about her sad recent history, and why she came to Virgin River, as well as more about the assortment of various rural characters she encounters, works with, cares for and falls in love with. It was a very watchable and likeable “fish out of water” show for the first couple of seasons.

I found by the third season, though, that I had become deeply tired of it. The plot seemed increasingly outlandish, many of the characters’ behaviors and choices were overly-dramatic, and the plot situations thought up by the show’s writers seemed to be geared toward trying ever more desperately to drum up some excitement and emotional impact for viewers by creating a story where there really wasn’t any left.

In other words, it had turned into a true prime-time soap opera. At that point, I stopped watching it, although I understand that Netflix has agreed to future seasons 4 (dropping later this month) and 5 (sometime next year?), so I assume plenty of fans must still be enjoying it.

Based on that, I would cautiously recommend it, but only until you reach the point in the series where it starts to exceed your personal “jumping the shark” tolerance, and you've lost the ability to suspend disbelief about the increasingly ridiculous plot developments, and visceral dislike for at least some of the major characters you're presumably supposed to like and care about.

To me, it’s a particularly good example of the frequent situation where show producers should recognize after a few seasons (but often don’t) that they’ve mined a vein until it ran out, and it’s time to close the mine, before the whole thing collapses under its own weight.