Decided to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games? No problem. There are plenty of other live and on-demand options being offered on the major streaming services in the next week. If you are looking for laughs, Netflix is offering Murderville and Disenchantment. In the mood for darker stuff? There’s HBO Max’s Raised By Wolves and Apple TV Plus’ Suspicion. Two documentaries – Disney Plus’ Torn and Hulu’s Clotilda: Last American Slave Ship will leave you in tears. And depending on your NFL allegiance to a certain recently retired middle-aged quarterback legend, ESPN Plus’ The Tuck Rule will also leave you in tears … or jumping for joy.
Raised By Wolves - Season 2 (HBO Max, Feb. 3)
Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic is back. This time around android partners Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim), and their six human children, join an atheistic colony after facing religious wars on the other side of extrasolar planet Kepler-22b, which this hybrid family calls home. But even in the absence of religious jargon, the future of the human race on Kepler-22b still isn’t looking so good. The first season of the series clicked with critics, who aggregated it at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Muderville, (Netflix, Feb. 3)
It’s a police procedural with a twist. In each of the series six episodes, Will Arnett stars as a senior homicide detective who teams with a different celebrity guest to solve a murder case. The twist is that the celebrity guests are not given a script. Instead, they must improvise their way through each episode and ultimately guess who committed the crime. On paper it seems like a difficult concept to pull off, but with Arnett at the wheel, how can it go wrong? Adapted from the BBC3 series Murder in Successville, Season ! guests include Ken Jeong, Marshawn Lynch (yup, "Beastmode" himself), Kumail Nanjiani, Annie Murphy, Conan O’Brien and Sharon Stone.
Torn (Disney Plus, Feb. 4)
In 1999, world-renowned mountain climber Alex Lowe was killed in an avalanche in the Himalayas. He left behind a wife and three children. Approximately two decades after the tragedy, Lowe’s oldest son, Max, now 31, began making a documentary about how the tragedy impacted his family, and how his father’s climbing partner and best friend, Conrad Anker, came to play a central role in the lives of his family. The National Geographic docu premiered at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival. While reviewed by just a handful of critics, the film scored an impressive 100% aggregated rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “The director’s conversations with his mother, younger brothers, and his stepfather, Conrad Anker, who was once Alex Lowe’s most trusted mountaineering partner, all straddle the line between interview and healing circle, trying to reconcile the real, mortal Alex with the Superman that they and the public at large saw him as. Learning to not only see but embrace that humanity is the central thread of Torn, which, by its quiet ending, has demonstrated how unexpected bonds can form around those in grief,” wrote Claire Shaffer for The New York Times.
The Beijing Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony (Peacock, Feb. 4)
Back in 2008, acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou (The House of Flying Daggers) directed the opening and closing ceremonies for the Beijing Summer Olympic Games. This year he is back to helm the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games opening and closing acts. But don’t expect a repeat presentation of the show he produced 14 years ago. The 2022 edition of the opening ceremony will not include large-scale performances that stretch for long periods of time. Also, the number of performers has been cut from 15,000 in 2008 to 3,000, and the entire ceremony will take place in less than 100 minutes. Another new addition will be the cloud of tension hanging over Beijing’s National Stadium -- an atmosphere created by the ongoing pandemic, and China’s response to it, as well as President Biden’s decision to not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Games because of China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.” Peacock will present live streaming coverage of every event of The XXIV Winter Olympics across all 15 sports from Feb. 2-20.
Suspicion (Apple TV Plus, Feb. 4)
Based on the award-winning Israeli series False Flag, this thriller series stars Uma Thurman as a successful American businesswoman whose only child is kidnapped from a New York City hotel. The FBI seeks out four ordinary looking British citizens who were at the hotel on the night in question. The show comes with quite a bit of pedigree. In addition to Thurman, the eight-episode series also stars Kunal Nayyar (The Big Bang Theory), Noah Emmerich (The Americans) and Georgina Campbell (Black Mirror). Rob Williams (Man in the High Castle) created, and executive produced the series and Chris Long (The Americans) produced also directed various episodes.
Reacher (Amazon Prime, Feb. 4)
In the new Amazon series, novelist Lee Child’s Jack Reacher looks a bit different than he did in 2012 and 2016, when the diminutive Tom Cruise cinematically portrayed the anti-establishment hero. In his book series, Child describes the titular character as a 6-foot-5, 250 pound force to be reckoned with. Amazon heard that description loud and clear. The studio hired former Titan star Alan Ritchson to play the brick house trying to right wrongs in the eight-episode original series based on Child’s first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor. The entire series will be available on Amazon Prime in over 240 countries and territories come Feb. 4.
Howard High (Tubi, Feb. 4)
The musical teen drama joins more than 1,400 Black cinema titles available on Tubi throughout February’s Black History Month. Focused on a high school performance group that must compete against a rival school in order to save their arts program, the Tubi original film “aims to shine a light on the challenges that school arts programs face in underfunded neighborhoods — all through the power of song and dance.”
The Tuck Rule: The Call That Change It All - 30 for 30 (ESPN Plus, Feb. 7)
Twenty years ago, the "Tuck Rule" changed Tom Brady’s life. Without that rule, which dictates that a football loosened from a quarterback's hand does not constitute a fumble if the arm is in a throwing motion, the recently retired quarterback wouldn’t have won his first playoff game. How differently might have things turned out for the seven-time Super Bowl champion? The controversial call is examined in the latest 50-minute installment of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series. Brady along with the former player whose strip fumble was famously over-ruled, Raiders defensive back Charles Woodson, reminisce about the fateful collision, with referee Walt Coleman, Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick, Tedy Bruschi, Troy Brown, Willie McGinest, Mark Davis, Tim Brown, Eric Allen and Lincoln Kennedy also weighing in.
Clotilda: Last American Slave Ship (Hulu, Feb. 8)
The National Geographic documentary explores the remains of the last American slave ship, The Clotilda. In 1860, 110 kidnapped Africans sailed to slavery on the ship. Upon arrival in Alabama, traffickers, who knew it was illegal to bring new slaves to America, burned and sank The Clotilda to hide their crime. In 2019, 160 years after the ship sank, maritime archaeologists discovered the wreck. The documentary explores the remains of the ship, which is the most intact slave shipwreck found to date, the passengers, and their descendants.
Disenchantment – Season 4 (Netflix, Feb. 9)
Matt Groening’s fantasy sitcom, which launched on Netflix back in 2018, is back. The adult animated sitcom is set in the kingdom of Dreamland and stars hard-drinking princess Bean, her elf-companion Elfo and her “personal demon” Luci. The official logline for the fourth season reads: “The mystery of Dreamland’s origins—and the stakes for its future—become ever clearer as our trio—and King Zøg—find themselves on personal journeys that will ultimately tie in to the kingdom’s fate.”
