He recalls speaking to one person who found Ross’s show a refuge from arguing parents headed for divorce. Ross was an “incredibly skilled artist” whose work elicits “a cosy winter feeling”, says the director. There was no Netflix and so to see Bob Ross was to tune into his show when it was programmed to be on television and he had a huge following. Rofé, 38, says: “It was right size for the era. We just have happy accidents.” It was comfort television, like soaking in a warm bath, in the days when appointment television ruled. His words of whimsy included, “Every day is a good day when you paint,” and “We don’t make mistakes. With permed hair and balmy voice, he hosted The Joy of Painting on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) from 1983 to 1994. Indeed, the documentary starts as conventional biography, telling how Ross served in the air force for 20 years, learned a wet-on-wet painting technique from a close friend and became best known for producing tranquil nature scenes featuring “happy little trees”.

“I just wanted to make a film that would represent this individual who is in many ways a mystery and yet completely beloved by so many.” “In no way did I set out to make a film that was a ‘gotcha!’ film,” Rofé says via Zoom from New York. This is the surprise twist in Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed, a Netflix film about the landscape artist who created more than 30,000 paintings and touched millions of lives before his death from lymphoma in 1995 at the age of 52.

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