If you’re looking for a little something-something on TV that you may throw on and get through in a couple of days this weekend, then you’ve come to the right place, because I’ve done much of the legwork for you—all you have to do is sit and binge.
Huluhas a metric tonne of TV shows across all kinds of genres, but since I like to watch a lot of stuff, here are just a few of the shows I’ve vetted for you this weekend. Enjoy.
2020
1
10
5 hours
Status
Canceled
As a card-carrying vinyl nerd, and a gentleman of a certain vintage, John Cusack’sHigh Fidelitywas about the coolest movie I’d ever seen when it came out in 2000, and the 1995 Nick Hornby novel it was based on just blew my mind. So, to say I was a bit slow to Hulu’s 2020 reimagined series is an understatement. But like the book/movie/show’s protagonist, I just needed to get over myself and watch, and I’m glad I did.
Zoe Kravitz does an admirable job at filling Cusack’s big shoes as Robyn “Rob” Brooks, Hornby’s lovelorn, music-obsessed, record store owner, and the gender swap breathes new life and perspective into the story. In-keeping with the source material, the sometimes smug, cigarette-smoking, fourth-wall-breaking Rob takes us through her top five, all-time heartbreaks, as she struggles to get to the bottom of her relationship failures and how she ended up stuck slinging vinyl in Brooklyn Heights. It sticks pretty close to the story, down to her standing outside an ex’s apartment in the rain screaming, “Let’s work it out!”
The 10 episodes flew by, and I was saddened the show was canceled. I was getting to know the quirky record nerds at Championship Vinyl (thankfully, they kept the name), including Simon (David H. Holmes), the quiet and sensitive equivalent of the movie’s Dick who’s always getting trounced on by the scene-stealing Cherise (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who doesn’t quite get up to Jack Black’s Barry levels, but close.
2019
2
25
12 hours 15 mins
Ended
By all rights, a show likePen15shouldn’t be on my watch list … like, at all. But within the first five minutes of this awkwardcoming-of-age comedyseries about two teenaged girls, I was laughing my head off as one of its lead characters, Maya, fights off her mother as she gives her a terrible bowl cut, the day before starting seventh grade.
But I’ve buried the lede here: the thing that has made the Emmy-nominatedPen15so unique and so funny is that its creators, thirty-something writer-actors Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, play 13-year-old versions of themselves while the other characters around them are played by actual teens.
Part satire and part honest and heartfelt account of the girls' middleschool triumphs and traumas,Pen15is set in the early 2000s, and follows the best friends as they contend with bullies, crushes, sexual awakenings, racial identity, and all the adolescence things.
Erskine and Konkle play the girls brilliantly to type, knowing when to use their sometimes obvious real ages to full satirical effect, and when to pull back to draw emotions—you weirdly sometimes believe they’re 13. But make no mistake,Pen15’s (you get it, right?) surreal absurdity draws real laughs, all the way through its too-short two-season run.
2023
7
7 hours
I was a huge fan of Brit Marling’s weird and wonderful seriesThe OA, so when I heard that her and writing partner Zal Batmanglig were at it again withA Murder at the End of the World, I was in.
Deadpool & Wolverine’s Emma Corrin (who played mind-bender Cassandra Nova) stars as Darby Hart, a 24-year-old hacker and amateur cold-case solver who’s had some success and notoriety. Darby finds herself among the famous guests of tech billionaire Andy Ronson (Clive Owen) at his secluded mountain mansion.
Darby’s not sure why she’s there, but she’s sharing the posh, teched-out compound with some of the world’s most influential thinkers, including Andy’s wife and former coder, Lee (Marling), and Darby’s sleuthing (and romantic) partner, Bill (Harris Dickinson). The retreat turns into a dark whodunit, however, when Bill mysteriously turns up dead. Isolated from the world, and surrounded by Ronson’s AI-controlled house, Darby has to use all her hacker skills to outsmart it, and the other guests, to uncover the killer.
The single-season miniseries is beautifully shot, brooding, and knows how to use its isolating locale to deliver a claustrophobic unease when it needs to. It still maintains an 89% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and is worth a look if you’re into darkmurder mysterieswith a poignant high-tech bend.
When you consider the sheer breadth of Hulu’s ever-evolving library of movies and shows, its subscription fee is money well spent. There are, however, definitely some ways toget your money’s worthout of the service.
Hulu
These great shows are all waiting for you on Hulu, along with many more series and movies.
