Misfits
I know I cover a lot of British TV on this site, but what can I say, I dig what I dig. Here’s a strange little show I stumbled across when looking for something (anything!) interesting on Hulu Plus. (In Hulu’s defense, I might find the service more interesting if I didn’t also have cable. Maybe it’s time to cut the chord?)
Misfits follows a crew of, um, misfits, who are serving community service when they are caught up in an electrical storm and get special powers. Two of the five have fairly conventional powers (mind-reading and invisibility). One other has the comic-bookish ability to turn back time, which leads to inevitable paradoxes. Of the other two, the girl has the Rogue-ish ability to make anyone want to have sex with her just by coming into contact with them and the other takes the entire series to figure out his power.
It’s billed as a comedy/drama, but I’d say it skews a little more dramatic than similarly categorized shows on this side of the pond. Also, I can’t understand half of what Lauren Socha says (she plays Kelly, the telepath). All six episodes are currently available on Hulu Plus.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
In a world where all vampires can do is look angsty and make teenage girls’ hearts melt, it’s almost quaint to look back at a vampire show that’s heavy on action (every vampire knows karate!) and even heavier on sass.
Buffy gave us a whole world of beasties and, um, beastie fighters over its seven seasons and you can catch up on all of them on Netflix and Hulu Plus (which are both now $7.99 for all you can stream). It also inspired a spin-off and launched Joss Whedon to his current nerd-genius status.
I missed the boat on Buffy the first time around, and I have to admit I haven’t quite caught up on all 144 episodes, but I have a few questions… Can someone be a werewolf and a vampire at the same time? How about a witch and a vampire? Why is there so much hand-to-hand combat involved in slaying vampires? And isn’t Angel just dreamy?
Uh… never mind that last one.
Of course, as with most TV shows that are almost old enough to drive, watching Buffy is like a constant parade of Before They Were Stars. It should be a drinking game… if you spot an actor you recognize in a bit part, you have to take a shot. (Don’t actually do that, I don’t want to get sued.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 1 on Netflix
Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu Plus
And a special bonus: the original movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Movie on Netflix
Chuck
When Chuck premiered three years ago, it didn’t seem to have much of a shot. It was promoted as heavily as some other new shows by NBC, and you could be forgiven mistaking some of the leads for stars from other shows (Zachary Levi says he gets mistaken for John Krasinski, and there is something very Seth Green about Josh Gomez).
But Chuck has all the style (and all the beautiful people) you’d expect from a show co-created by The O.C. and Gossip Girl’s Josh Schwartz. Plus, the action is decent, the jokes are funny and the characters are interesting. It’s also chock full o’ guest stars and geek culture references.
In a bit of a departure for Qworthy so far, Chuck’s previous seasons aren’t available for streaming anywhere, but the current season is on Hulu. Only the last five episodes are available at any one time (the first episode of the season expires in four days), but if you missed the season premiere and feel like jumping into a new series with both feet, head over to Hulu and check it out.
Good Eats
For fans of cooking shows, there have been a fair number of streaming options lately. Netflix, for example, has most seasons of Anthony Bourdain and Man V. Food, plus less palatable fare (wonk wonk) like Hell’s Kitchen.
But recently Hulu raised the bar with addition of Good Eats.
Alton Brown is the father of the modern cooking show, or at least its nerdy uncle. Half cooking show and half science show, each Good Eats episode focuses on one ingredient and explores it thoroughly. With the help of homemade molecular models, kitschy skits, and a disembodied hand/sous chef, he teaches a handful of recipes and their overarching techniques.
There are only 5 full episodes on Hulu so far, but with 117 additional clips, there’s plenty to watch.
Tribute to Stephen J. Cannell
Stephen J. Cannell, who passed away at the end of September, was responsible for some of the best TV of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, including Rockford Files, A-Team, The Commish and Greatest American Hero. You probably remember him for his production card, which included footage of Cannell typing and then tossing a piece of paper, which turned into an animated logo. (You can see several versions here.) Next to “Sit Ubu, sit,” it’s the credit I remember most from my childhood.
Here’s a round-up of everything I could find that he wrote, produced or created. If I missed any, let me know in the comments and I’ll update the post. Some of these shows don’t hold up very well, so if you have particularly fond memories of one of them, it might be better to just skip it.
The Greatest American Hero: Season 1 on Netflix
The Greatest American Hero on Hulu
The Rockford Files: Season 1 on Netflix
The A-Team: Season 1 on Netflix
The A-Team on Hulu (Available only through Sept. 18, 2011)
The Commish: Season 1 on Netflix
21 Jump Street: Season 1 on Netflix
Firefly
Star Trek has the reputation for being a short-lived sci-fi series, but it’s got nothing on Firefly. Fox bought the show, ran the episodes out of order, and killed it after only 14 were filmed. Nonetheless, Joss Whedon’s dystopian space western launched a cult following that, while not quite of Star Trekian proportions, was large enough to result in the film Serenity, which closed out many of the show’s story lines. (Fans of Firefly are called Browncoats, BTW, which you will understand shortly into the series.)
If this is your cup of tea at all, you might as well run out and get the DVDs (actually, if you knew about it and didn’t hate it, you probably already own the DVDs), but in case you’re not sure, the complete series is available on Netflix and Hulu Plus (and Serenity is available on Netflix, as well).
A stand-out character in the series is Adam Baldwin’s Jayne. If you like Baldwin in NBC’s Chuck (which had its fourth-season premiere last night), you’ll definitely dig him in Firefly and Serenity. Plus it features Nathan Fillion displaying all the charm he shows in Castle and Dr. Horrible (and that he didn’t not in the short-lived Drive).
I’m purposefully leaving out the details of the show, because I think it’s better to go in open to discovering what it has to offer. But in a television landscape that is increasingly full of remakes or retellings of the same old stories—or worse, reality show tripe—shows like Firefly are rare. If it had only been successful, maybe we could have a slew of space western clones instead of spinoffs of The Girls Next Door.
Firefly: The Complete Series on Netflix
Lie to Me
Apparently due to its licensing deals with the studios, most current shows are only available on Hulu in a very limited way. Usually just the last five episodes are available and they show up on the site anywhere from one day to two weeks after a new episode airs. I’m sure this makes sense to someone, somewhere, but it’s just frustrating for users.
But, one of the benefits of Hulu Plus seems to be that some shows’ current seasons are actually available in full. (Hurray!) One current show that you can check out on Hulu Plus is Lie to Me, a self-serious drama about human lie detectors loosely based on the concept of microexpressions.
The show centers around Dr. Cal Lightman, a microexpressions expert played by Tim Roth (Mr. Orange from Reservoir Dogs and Pumpkin from Pulp Fiction, for you Tarantino fans). Lightman is basically Dr. House, but instead of recklessly solving life-threatening illnesses (spoiler: it’s usually Wilson’s Disease), he recklessly assists the FBI with their cases. And they’re both on Fox. I wonder if there’ll be a crossover episode.
If procedurals are your thing and you haven’t checked out Lie to Me yet, give it a shot. This is the third season, though there’s really no need to go back and watch earlier episodes because there isn’t much in the way of a cross-season arc. If you want, season one is available on Netflix Instant as well (no season two yet, alas).
Coupling
I suppose you could say we are in the habit of featuring British TV shows, but it’s not my fault there are so many available for streaming and this is only the third one, so get off my back. Wait, where was I? Ah, yes… Coupling. I guess you could call this the British Friends, only it’s funnier and much raunchier. If you watch much basic cable, you may recognize Gina Bellman from TNT’s Leverage.
There aren’t may shows that can make you laugh out loud (yeah, literally “LOL”) even when sitting by yourself in your living room. My advice is to avoid streaming it at work, because you’ll definitely get caught when everyone in the office gathers around your cubicle to see what’s wrong with you.
As with most successful shows from the old country, there was an attempt to make a US version (featuring Colin Ferguson, now of SyFy’s Eureka). Unlike The Office which re-imagined the series for a US audience, Coupling took the same route The I.T. Crowd later tried and just had American actors recite the same scripts. (I was also a little disappointed the US version didn’t use Cake’s version of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps—the theme song from Coupling.)
There were four seasons of Coupling, and their all available on both Netflix and Hulu (free, not Plus), so do yourself a favor and carve out a few weekend hours for the next few weeks and check it out.
The Professional
There are some movies you have to watch anytime they’re on. For me, this is one of them. Jean Reno is fantastic here, as he is in all his roles (yes, even Couples Retreat and the Pink Panther remakes), but it’s a young Natalie Portman that steals the show.
If you’ve only seen her in the Star Wars prequels, you might not know that she can act. But, here, she shows a craft she didn’t get to display in Lucas’s vanity project. (Fun fact: Portman was also in Beautiful Girls, the Matt Dillon flick that gave us the version of Sweet Caroline that everyone sings at baseball games.)
The Professional was written and directed by Luc Besson, writer-director of The Fifth Element and La Femme Nikita and writer of the Transporter movies, among others, which should give you an idea of the overall tone (and level of violence) of the movie.
Modern Family
Last year while most of the country was watching Charlie Sheen and John Cryer over on CBS, ABC was busy taking The Office’s formula (quirky, single camera, documentary style, with no laugh track) and applying it to the new traditional family. And they did it to great success—they just won the Emmy for best comedy (plus eight others).
The show is worth watching just to see Ed O’Neill in a family sitcom not playing Al Bundy. And Cameron Tucker (played by Eric Stonestreet) is the funniest character on television. We’ve still got a couple weeks before the fall TV season kicks off and the new season of Modern Family premieres. If you work real hard at it, you should be able to squeeze in all 24 episodes of season 1 before then.
