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We can't stop watching the addictive new Netflix series Emily in Paris, which combines all our Francophile dreams with gorgeous, super-chic fashion, pain au chocolat, ambition, and very cute guys (hi Antoine and Gabriel!). Apart from protagonist Emily - who dons looks like short plaid jackets and chic monochrome outfits, and is delightfully neurotic with everything from work to love - there's another character whose fashion sense and big attitude are next-level. Parisian boss Sylvie is fashion-forward but classic in her style, and a total Miranda Priestly when it comes to her behavior as marketing firm director. Sylvie is played by Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu in a way that is believable, hilarious, wince-inducing, and very, very French.

Who is Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu?

Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu is a French actress who was born in 1963 in Rome, and she is the daughter of French film star Philippe Leroy, who is known for his extensive work in Italian cinema.

It's rather difficult to look at a film critically many years after it's been released, especially if that film was originally made for a very specific niche audience which in the case of Mistral's Daughter happens to be middle-aged women.

Here's the thing. Mistral's Daughter should not be taken seriously. At least not if you want to have even the slightest bit of appreciation for it. One should watch this mini-series as one would view a silent film; as an anthropologically revealing cultural artifact from a distant time period that had different understandings of what constituted entertainment. And hey, entertainment is a pretty subjective term as it is. But I digress.

Mistral's Daughter is an epic 1980s miniseries in the vein of Dynasty. Spanning a period of about 50 years, the show begins with 1920s Paris and extends all the way to the 1970s. It starts out by introducing us to...

Steve Krantz, who produced the X-rated animated movie Fritz The Cat and created successful TV mini-series out of wife Judith Krantz's romance novels, has died. He was 83. Krantz died of complications from pneumonia on January 4 in Los Angeles. During his TV career, he wrote for Milton Berle and Arthur Godfrey and helped create several comedies, including Dennis The Menace and Bewitched as head of creative development at Columbia Pictures Television. He was also executive producer for Steve Allen's The Tonight Show. Krantz later turned to feature films such as Fritz the Cat, based on the Robert Crumb underground comic and Cooley High, about black high school students in the 1960s. In the 1980s and 1990s, he produced mini-series based on his wife's steamy novels, including Scruples, Mistral's Daughter and Dazzle. After his retirement, Krantz was involved with mental-heath counseling and former California Governor Pete Wilson appointed him to the board of the California Mental Health Council.