Looking for a break from wondering what the world will be like when the lockdown ends? Two multiple-award-winning TV series from the dawn of this millennium might give you the diversion you need.

On May 20, about to leave Xi’an in northwest China, I sat at breakfast checking email on my iPhone. The news: J. Jon Bruno, Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles, is selling the former St. James Church in Newport Beach, Calif., completed in 2002. St. James was the largest and most vibrant evangelical congregation in the Diocese of Los Angeles. Eight hundred members at least. Now, a developer will pay $15 million for the property and probably replace the church with townhouses.

OTRANTO, Italy—Islamic State beheadings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and several other Westerners have stunned Americans, but that’s because we don’t know much about the history of cities like Otranto.

I read the deathly news stories while exploring this city at the heel of the Italian boot. Walking on rain-soaked cobblestones, I headed to Otranto Cathedral, a Norman church built in 1068 on the remains of a much earlier church. Just to the right of the church’s altar is the shrine to the 800 martyrs, three walls stacked with skulls and bones.