(Welcome to Small-Screen Stream, a feature where we share the best television shows streaming and where you can watch them.)
October is here, and I’m resisting the urge to make a horror-only list as best I know how. I plan to dedicate my next entry entirely to the spooky season, but before doing so, I wanted to shed some light on other, less-scary shows. Plenty was recently added to our favorite streaming services, making it deceptively easy to write up a compilation this week. Please enjoy this mix of new additions, old gems, and a few things I probably shouldn’t have discovered on my Hulu playlist. I’ll see you back here next time with all of the scary stuff you could possibly imagine!
Pushing Daisies, Seasons 1-2
Where To Watch: Amazon Prime
Created By: Bryan Fuller
Starring: Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Krisin Chenoweth
After years of lamenting, the streaming gods finally answered our prayers on October 1st, when Pushing Daisies arrived on Amazon Prime. Bryan Fuller’s lush, beautiful show is a bizarre one to explain. Lee Pace plays Ned, a pie-maker with the ability to reanimate the dead by touching them, and put them back to rest by touching them again. But if he doesn’t return them to the dead after one minute, another person in his vicinity will drop dead. In the pilot, he resurrects his childhood sweetheart Chuck (Anna Friel), but can’t bring himself to kill her again, and so blossoms a sweet relationship between two people who can never touch. Ned’s gift also leads to a side hustle, where he helps solve crimes, and each episode is about solving some new murder mystery. The series is beloved for its quirky characters and enchanting premise, but also for its lush, technicolor visuals and tender score. It’s a blessing to have it back on our streaming screens, even though it was prematurely canceled and thus only made it to season two.
Maniac, Season 1
Where To Watch: Netflix
Created By: Patrick Somerville
Starring: Emma Stone, Jonah Hill, Justin Theroux, Sonoya Mizuno, Sally Field
Maniac doesn’t necessarily need my promotion, as its one of the more major television events of the year. Recent Oscar-winner Emma Stone and two-time nominee Jonah Hill star as two strangers who join a pharmaceutical trial to tend to their individual mental illnesses. The two start the trial, but are flagged after they respond in odd ways, and what follows is a series of hallucinations and dream sequences that inquire about deeper truths, like human connection and possibility. Everyone is excellent here, but the standout is Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed every episode and who lends his unique visual style to a less ordinary story. At times, Maniac feels maddeningly like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or FX’s Legion, but with time you’ll notice its own unique DNA.
Spaced, Seasons 1-2
Where To Watch: Amazon Prime
Created By: Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson
Starring: Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson, Nick Frost Mark Heap
I’m not sure if it was recently added or if I’d somehow failed to notice that Spaced was on Amazon Prime, but I was thrilled to see it on my feed earlier this week, and dipped back into certain episodes that I’ve loved forever. The show is about two London residents, Tim (Simon Pegg) and Daisy (Jessica Stevenson), who decide to pose as a couple so they can obtain cheaper rent. The series follows their rambunctious lives post move-in. It’s equal parts surreal and heartwarming, and though – like Pushing Daisies – it only lasted two seasons, they are seasons so familiar and wonderful that you almost don’t mind you didn’t get more. These are characters who are alive to me, and it launched the career of Pegg.
Hey Arnold, Seasons 1-5
Where To Watch: Hulu
Created By: Craig Bartlett
Hulu has a great offering of ‘90s Nick Toons, but I was the most excited to find Hey Arnold on the list. Other cartoons from my past have failed to live up to adult standards, but Hey Arnold is different. The show is a beautiful portrait of diverse inner-city life for middle schoolers, and has a bevy of episodes I still haven’t been able to shake, some 20 years after I’ve first seen them. It’s a coming of age movie disguised as a Nickelodeon cartoon series, one that anyone might watch and feel pangs for. If you, like me, were a Helga, her narrative is harrowing even still. It’s a joy to rediscover this seminal series.
Growing Pains, Seasons 1-7
Where To Watch: Amazon Prime
Created By: Neal Marlens
Starring: Alan Thicke, Joanna Kerns, Kirk Cameron, Tracey Gold, Jeremy Miller
Speaking of seminal series, I was obsessed with Growing Pains as a kid, and was thrilled to see that Amazon Prime recently added it to its roster. There are layers of melancholy that come with watching the show in the 21st century. Namely, the death of Alan Thicke, which lends a sadness to the Seaver family scenes. Also, the total radicalization of star Kirk Cameron, who descended into extreme Christian madness as the series progressed. You can see the repercussions of that in real time, as Mike Seaver goes from adolescent bad boy to something more wholesome, but it doesn’t detract from the joys of this family comedy. The Seaver house is as familiar to me as my own, and the intro music still tugs at my heartstrings.
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The post Small-Screen Stream: ‘Pushing Daisies’ Comes to Amazon, Netflix Gets Trippy with ‘Maniac,’ and More TV to Stream This Week appeared first on /Film.
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