I found a new show that I really like and makes me think of my dad.

Endgame is about Arkady Balagan, a famous Russian champion chess player who saw his fiancé murdered (blown up in a car), who now cannot leave the hotel he has been residing in, The Huxley. He spent his entire life in hotels, so this hotel is his “home” and he is an agoraphobic.

He walks the hotel in his jammies, yes I said jammies, racks up mounds of charges at the hotel and is very low on funds himself. He now solves crimes, all from the hotel, and uses a chess groupie, a bartender, a hotel maid and sometimes the hotel head of security. He fell into it when, in the first episode a child is missing and he asks the right questions.

Now, people come to him to solve their problems, crimes, issues and he charges them, sometime what they can afford, sometimes for a favor, sometimes a lot of money. He’s brash and forward, direct and annoying, brilliant and caring and looks at each case from every angle, each persons view and on a chess board and all in his bare feet (I like that part the best). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1797629/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

The reason this show reminds me of my dad, as I mentioned, is that my dad plays chess. He’s played since I was a kid, he’s good too, tried to teach me, I enjoyed backgammon more than I did chess. He played postal chess, I remember the stacks and stacks of postcards of moves, I always found it amazing that he could follow along and had the patience to wait for the mail to bring a new move. I might be mistaken, but there may have been multiple boards set up with different games in my house growing up. Now he plays online, games happen a little faster, but probably not much more since he needs to wait for the next move.

He introduced me to a book, The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte, all centered around a painting and a chess game, go figure! There was mystery, intrigue, love, hate, murder, right up my alley! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arturo_Pérez-Reverte Endgame is on Hulu, so if you can handle the commercials, I recommend the show.