In April, there are tons of great titles available to stream – some of which sync great with the franchises we are spotlighting this month! It’s our latest roundup to compliment your loot when it arrives! Dig up some dirt with INVESTIGATE, and so much good stuff this month…
Jessica Jones
Suffice to say, it’s a big month for Netflix in this month’s crate assortments – starting with Marvel’s super-powered private investigator. Krysten Ritter was born to play the hard-drinking, sass-talking Jessica, trying her damnedest not to care about caring too much, whose first season has her ensnared in a nerve-rattling cat-and-mouse game with the murderous Kilgrave (a sublimely creepy David Tennant). It’s a real emotional rollercoaster and, as such, it’s harder to binge than most Marvel series, but it’s their most impactful show to date. (And it snared a Peabody Award, arguably more prestigious than a raggedy old Emmy. Fact!) Catch up now before Season 2 hits, probably next year – is it too soon to hope for Jess’s pal Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) to go full Hellcat next season?!
Stranger Things
If somehow you missed the boat on last summer’s must-see streaming Netflix event, this summer would be a great time to catch up… or, you know, this weekend. No pressure! In all honesty, the eight episodes of this freshman season breeze by so fast, yet with so much to chew on, you’re left wanting more. There is much in Stranger Things that borrows liberally from the genre touchstones of the 1980s – Spielberg, King, even those who inspired them from Lovecraft to Serling. And yet it’s the characters – friendships, familial love and blossoming romances aplenty – that feel so vital. None more so than Millie Bobby Brown, who takes a psychokinetic child who has spent her entire life in a laboratory and makes her one of the most instantly empathetic characters on television.
The X-Files
Is there ever a bad time to catch up with Mulder and Scully? We’d argue no way, although the best time does seem to be late at night, while tucked into bed in fluffy jammies with all of the lights off – the better to appreciate those really spooky ones. For nine seasons, The X-Files ruled the roost of genre TV on Fox, and thankfully Hulu still has the entire original run for your enjoyment. Purists will argue, and rightfully so, that the first five seasons shot in Vancouver are the best: Where the monster-of-the-week episodes were brilliant and the mythology eps delivered quality thrills, if not any real answers. Still, the latter L.A.-lensed seasons turned up some gems; “X-Cops”, a.k.a. the one where Mulder and Scully turn up in an episode of COPS, is just pure, mock-doc gold.
Daredevil
Matt Murdock has gone from part-time vigilante in a homemade black kick-ass suit to a full-fledged armored superhero in two seasons on Netflix. (And with his lawyering career very much uncertain where we left him.) Even when Matt is pulling his self-alienating, broody lone wolf thing, Charlie Cox manages to imbue him with a vulnerability and authentic idealism that keeps him grounded, and he’s surrounded by an exceptional cast including possibly Marvel’s greatest-yet villain in Vincent D’Onofrio’s complex, terrifying Wilson Fisk. We’d recommend not binging both seasons straight through – for full context and references, you should watch Jessica Jones in between! – but do catch Season Two of Daredevil before The Defenders this summer, as some key plot points are set up there that we’re waiting to see pay off…
Twin Peaks
Recently we ran a Friday Five discussing some of the biggest mysteries left open-ended by David Lynch and Mark Frost’s original run of Twin Peaks on ABC, and if you’re a big fan we hope you agree! If you haven’t seen the show, however – don’t read that article, but rather run to Netflix and experience on one of the strangest, most sublime and influential shows of the past 50 years. (This is no exaggeration. Seriously.) Twin Peaks is also available at the moment on Hulu and Amazon Prime, if you subscribe to the Showtime add-on package; the network is re-airing the original run in the lead up to the long-awaited return of the show, premiering May 21. You’re going to want to get to know Kyle MacLachlan’s iconic Agent Cooper and the rest of the town, before they are back for another helping of coffee and pie.
Batman
Well, as it turns out we had old Bats in a Streaming the Loot round-up earlier this year, so we’d direct you to that blog to check it out! Most of what’s available vs. what isn’t hasn’t changed at all since its publication. That said, we definitely want to highlight Amazon Prime; where last time only the first season of Batman: The Animated Series was available to stream, now they’ve got a full four volumes of what is one of the definitive animated superhero series of all time. Soak up the Gotham goodness!
