Let’s talk about scary things. No, I don’t mean viruses!

Recently my husband and I have formed a sort of film society with friends of ours, only viewing television programs in each other’s homes instead of films. It has made for some interesting dialogue because I can never keep the names of the programs straight.

“Are we watching ‘Only Strangers in the Building’ tonight? I don’t know why they call it that. They’re not really strangers to each other any more in their second season.”

“They DON’T call it that, Judy — they call it ‘Only Murders In the Building.’ And to answer your question, it’s a ‘Stranger Things’ night.”

“Oh. That’s right. I’d better bring a sweater.”

“It’s a 100 degrees out tonight. Why would you want a sweater?”

“It’s something to grip after you complain I’ve cut off the circulation in your arm.”

Some people like scary TV shows and movies. Some people like sweet pickles. They are both wrong. I honestly think that one reason my husband likes scary stuff is to show off how stoic he looks next to me. I might jump and yelp a bit.

“If it’s so hard for you to watch, Judy, why are we doing this?”

“Because you like it. Don’t you?”

“Well, yes, but mostly what I like is the ice cream we always have afterwards.”

“So if I served ice cream, would you watch ‘Washington Week’ with me? Instead of every week ‘spontaneously’ deciding that that’s exactly when you have to trim your mustache?”

“Mmmm…. That’s a good question,” he says, stroking what’s left of his mustache. “How much ice cream are we talking?”

“Never mind, I already know the answer: There’s not enough in the world.”

If I have to watch something scary, I need other folks with me. Even then, I’m sometimes a mess. Some years ago, my children made me stop watching the TV show “Criminal Minds,” because I started suspecting everyone I met of being a serial killer. “Whereas it stands to reason, Mom, that only some of them are.”

I also couldn’t hear a floorboard creak or a door close, anywhere in the house, without screaming. I’m better now.

I can handle “Stranger Things” because—at least so far—nothing like its outrageous, supernatural events seem likely to happen in my actual life. I have to admit the acting and special effects are done well. But we have to start early in the evening — for my friends so they’re alert enough to keep track of clues, and for me so I can unwind enough to fall asleep by bedtime. (The ice cream helps.)

I much prefer “Only Strangers in the Building.”

“You keep calling it that, Judy, but it’s murders: ‘Only Murders in the Building’.”

This is the Hulu show created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, featuring Steve Martin as the straight man to Martin Short, who plays a probably washed-up and definitely egotistical Broadway producer — plus Selena Gomez as the millennial who handles the texting for the two “olds” and keeps the plot bubbling along.

The organizing conceit is that these three are producing a podcast, complete with critics and fans, while also trying to solve a murder, of which Gomez stands accused. There also is a podcast-within-the-podcast, mischievously titled “Only MurderERS in the Building,” which is produced by Tina Fey (playing against type as the completely shallow and narcissistic podcasting star, Cinda Canning) and which winds somehow through the plot.

It’s funny and very well-done, with just the right amount of menace for me. I know I’m in good hands, plus I get to vicariously live it up in the nooks and crannies of a fabulous Upper West Side apartment building while I’m at it.

But one night last week we slipped up, and found ourselves watching a real-life drama: the eighth installment of the Congressional Select Committee inquiry into the events of the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol—or as I prefer to call it “Only Traitors in the Building.”

That was scarier than anything in “Stranger Things”—and nobody can say how it’s going to turn out. After one night of that, even I was happy to get back to merely fictional tales of horror and murder.