I’ve been watching TV shows set in New York to get ready for our move to the Big Apple

Aisling Marron: Real New Yorkers apparently call the Statue of Liberty the Hulk. I have found no evidence of this, but I will report back

To get in the mood for moving to NYC, and for research purposes, I decided to watch TV shows set in New York. I didn’t have far to look and started to wonder if there were many TV shows not set in New York.

I tried Sex and the City but only managed 30 seconds. If I couldn’t bear the materialism in that programme as a teenage girl in Celtic Tiger Ireland, it was never going to have a better chance. But as I turned it off, I couldn’t help but wonder: if consumerism bothered me so much, was the United States really the right place to be going?

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel was pleasant and they lived in the same part of the city we were hoping to move to, but as soon as the first episode (not a spoiler) their marriage breaks down, with the husband confessing, “I just don’t want this life, this whole Upper West Side… wife, two kids, best seats in temple.” Not a great start, though my Catholic-born husband reassured me he definitely did want the whole Upper West Side life including the best seats in temple.

In Succession, they are not just wealthy but absolutely stupidly wealthy, yet every time they are out walking it’s in really unattractive parts of the city and under scaffolding. When is this city going to be finished?

We watched Seinfeld and swooned over his massive fridge which wasn’t only in New York but was 30 years ago in New York and was still four times bigger than our own fridge (even though it was catering for a quarter the number of people). And imagine the luxury of being able to look at your milk at eye level! Jerry Seinfeld also had not one, not two, but approximately 19 boxes of cereal on his shelf. We were so focused on the positives of the massive American fridge and ample cereal space that we turned a blind eye to the elephant in the room, which was the double bed in the kitchen.

READ MORE

I watched The Morning Show and was struck by the lack of natural light – where they lived, where they worked, where they socialised. And most of the characters in this show were very wealthy. Could even the rich not afford windows?

In Succession, they are not just wealthy but absolutely stupidly wealthy, yet every time they are out walking it’s in really unattractive parts of the city and under scaffolding. When is this city going to be finished?

I worried that the programme I was most drawn to was Girls, which follows the lives of 20-somethings, new to the city, establishing their careers and exploring their relationships and sexuality. I worried more that my husband’s favourite show was the above-referenced Succession, specifically Logan Roy in Succession, a gruff billionaire psychopath.

I asked my sister-in-law, an NYC native (now living in Dublin), for advice on living in New York and she said: “Do not block subway doors and do not get sick.” I hadn’t planned on getting sick but when someone says you can’t afford to, it suddenly feels like a lot of pressure not to. She also let me in on the secret that real New Yorkers call the Statue of Liberty the Hulk (because it is green). How had I never heard this in all of my overexposure to American media? Is this a wind up? I have found no evidence of it online and am yet to hear this phrase in the wild, but I will report back.

While we were undertaking all of this prep, we did little to prepare the kids, thinking they were too young to understand. Then one day, I overheard the toddler talking to herself while she played and she said that a monster was taking her to New York. Okay, so she had picked up something and it wasn’t positive. We got a children’s book about New York city and started to speak to her in a language she understood: swimming pools and food. In New York, she was going to go swimming and eat pizza and doughnuts and bagels.

From then on, she was always excited about going but when I asked her if she wanted to bring her mermaid doll with us and she said no because it would get wet, I realised her view of New York was that it was just one giant swimming pool. It was also clear that she didn’t have a fair grasp on what a mermaid was either.