Looking for New Shows to Binge? Check Out These Streaming Shows

Z: The Beginning of Everything - Christina Ricci
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Present Tense With Jillian Rose Reed
New Series
Available now, Fullscreen

Awkward actress Reed gets a new gig as a canny, curious and unique documentarian in this investigative series from Oscar nominee Morgan Spurlock’s Warrior Poets company. Her mission: Reveal the misconceptions surrounding today’s hot-button topics. Her big coup: a two-parter on gender identity, in which she and female drag pioneer Crimson Kitty (above right, with Reed) prove camp isn’t just for gay boys. But boomers and Gen X-ers must see Reed’s exposé on the much-maligned millennial generation, which shows how they use the net to promote solid causes and raise some serious money to help others. Like, for real.

The Investigator: A British Crime Story
New Miniseries
Available now, Netflix
Britain’s answer to Making a Murderer uses archive footage and dramatic reenactments to reopen the case of Carole Packman, who vanished from her seaside town of Bournemouth in 1985. Her body was never found—and though her husband has allegedly admitted to her murder, he won’t say where he stashed her. You can thank American Idol executive producer Simon Cowell for the harrowing four-part series, which also features testimonials from Packman’s now-47-year-old daughter, Samantha (played by actress Alice Harding, left, in flashbacks).

Neal Brennan: 3 Mics
New Stand-up
Tuesday, Jan. 17, Netflix
Brennan has three different microphones during this set (shot last year): one for traditional stand-up, one for one-liners and one for the emotional stuff (his best). On depression: “Imagine you had a cold,” he says, “and you could tell people were like…‘That stuffiness is a choice.’”

Z: The Beginning of Everything
Series premiere
Friday, Jan. 27, Amazon
Mad love overtook troubled socialite Zelda Sayre and unpublished writer F. Scott Fitzgerald when they met in 1918. This biopic tracks the bright young things’ rocky marriage through the Jazz Age and all over the world—trying hard not to make Z’s (played by Christina Ricci) mental illness look totally glam.

streaming

Frontier
Series Premiere
Friday, Jan. 20, Netflix
Remember when you said you loved Game of Thrones, but you wished it had more Canadian history in it? Well, lucky you. This drama about the 18th-century North American fur trade portrays the snowy turf war between the English, the French and the First Nations (Canada’s aboriginal people). Threatening them all: a rogue rebel force, led by the towering Declan Harp (Jason Momoa, far right, with Landon Liboiron), who wants to get his hands bloody.

Like Cotton Twines
Movie Premiere
Friday, Jan. 20, Urban Movie Channel
Insecure’s Jay Ellis (above, with Miranda Bailey) plays an American whose teaching trip to Ghana turns into a human-rights mission when he discovers an underground sex-slave ring holding deadly sway over the locals. Urban Movie Channel (the baby of BET founder Bob Johnson) is the first streaming service created for African-American viewers.

Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter
Series Premiere
Friday, Jan. 27, Amazon
Studio Ghibli (the Japanese animation group behind films like My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away) coproduced this cartoon based on the Swedish fantasy novel about a young girl living in the wild with a band of thieves. And it’s just as smart, moving and gosh darn cute as its predecessors. Gillian Anderson narrates the English version.

Also Streaming

Amazon
Dirty Grandpa, Jan. 27
Mercy Street, Season 2, Jan. 29

Hulu
The Path, Season 2, Jan. 25

Netflix
Bates Motel, Season 4, Jan. 21
Cristela Alonzo: Lower Classy, Jan. 24
Sharknado: The Fourth Awakens, Jan. 27
Ripper Street, Season 4, Jan. 28