New Hulu, Netflix, HBO and Amazon Films and TV Shows to Stream Right Now
Sci-Fi Rom-Coms, Dark Mystery, and A Documentary On A Sports Legend
BY Megan Ziots // 07.24.20Summer streaming is here to help keep us busy as we hunker down in the air conditioning. To help you navigate the endless titles, I rounded up a few new original films and TV shows that might as well be must watches. Happy viewing!
Palm Springs (Hulu)
One of Hulu’s newest original movies, Palm Springs is a romantic comedy starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti that also happens to be a very good time loop movie. (No spoilers here — it’s in the trailer.) Eerily relatable given the pandemic’s effect on our own personal timelines, the movie hinges on the great chemistry between Samberg and Milioti, plus an always-welcome performance from J.K. Simmons. Clocking in at a breezy 90 minutes, Palm Springs is just the simple, feel-good film (with a dash of quantum physics) a lot of us need right now.
The Last Dance (Netflix)
The 10-part documentary satisfied a nation’s thirst for sports in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns when it debuted on ESPN this spring, but for those that may have missed it, The Last Dance finally came out on Netflix. Co-produced by ESPN Films and Netflix, the doc follows Michael Jordan and his rise from getting cut from his high school team to his emergence at North Carolina to his final season with the Chicago Bulls. Even for someone who doesn’t know a ton about basketball, this series is pretty entertaining.
Using never-before-aired behind-the-scenes footage from the Bulls’ 1997 to 1998 season, the mini-series shows us a glimpse of history and the drama that ensued around Jordan’s final season with the Bulls that we never would have seen before.
Upload (Amazon Prime)
I completely underestimated this show after watching only the first two episodes of the new Amazon Prime original series. New half-hour comedy, Upload, has a pretty cheesy start. Set in the future with self-driving cars and 3D-printed food, the show stars Robbie Amell (Nathan Brown) as a young man who suspiciously dies in a car accident. Thankfully, in this time, there’s a digital afterlife, where people who have died can have their consciousness uploaded into a kind of digital heaven. There’s romance, comedy, and mystery in this strange sci-fi world, and somehow it really works. The show just got picked up for a second season.
Perry Mason (HBO)
This new HBO drama stars Matthew Rhys (The Americans) and honestly, that’s the main reason I started it. The Emmy-award winning actor plays Perry Mason, a private investigator in 1932 Los Angeles, who takes on a kidnapping gone wrong case. Dark and rough to watch at times, the mystery of whodunnit keeps me watching. Also, I’d missed Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany — she gives an incredible performance as a popular evangelist. Currently on episode six, there’s plenty of time to catch up before the next episode airs on July 26. The show is definitely binge-able.