Stream On This Week: Matthew Rhys Is a Cranky Dwarf and Rob Lowe Recommends a Classic Thriller

Welcome to the latest issue of Stream On, the weekly newsletter from Consequence that answers the eternally confounding question: What films and TV shows should you be watching? (Subscribe here!) We’re looking at all the new and recent releases from Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Prime Video, Paramount+, Peacock, HBO Max, and more for ideas — not to mention a Blast From the Past and streaming recommendations from this week’s special guest: The Musical stars Will Brill, Rob Lowe, and Gillian Jacobs!

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This Week’s Picks

Golden Axe (TV)

Created by: Mike McMahan, Joe Chandler
Cast: Matthew Rhys, Danny Pudi, Lisa Gilroy, Liam McIntyre, Carl Tart
Streaming on: Paramount+

So apparently this new animated series from Star Trek: Lower Decks/Solar Opposites creator Mike McMahan is based on a classic Sega video game. I did not play this game and know nothing about it, but that did not hamper my enjoyment of Golden Axe, a very fun adventure fantasy series that draws on TTRPG conventions in the best way. You’ve got magic, magical creatures, adventurers roaming the lands, a very sassy narrator, and Matthew Rhys voicing a cranky dwarf in a performance that might well win him yet another Emmy, it’s that good and distinctive. Just really fun stuff throughout.

Atomic (TV)

Created by: Gregory Burke
Cast: Alfie Allen, Shazad Latif, Samira Wiley
Streaming on: Hulu

This limited series came out last year to pretty much zero fanfare in the U.S. (it originated in the UK), but it’s a little treat of a thriller, starring Alfie Allen and past Stream On special guest Shazad Latif as two men who find themselves smuggling uranium through dangerous territory. Oh, and Samira Wiley from Orange Is the New Black and The Handmaid’s Tale also stars as an undercover CIA agent also caught up in this mess. The intrigue of the plot and the strong character development stand out here, and because the tone stays a bit lighter than you might expect from the premise, it’s a fun watch.

Best of the Best (Film)

Directed by: Lena Khan
Cast: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Priyanka Kedia, Chaneil Kular, Hasan Minhaj, Janina Gavankar
Streaming on: Netflix

Best of the Best is an easy sell for any lover of dance movies and/or female friendship, following the rocky freshman year of UCLA students Maya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Priyanka Kedia), true BFFs whose lifelong bond gets tested when they join a South Asian competitive dance team. This movie is packed with great, inventive dance sequences, and Maya and Anjali’s relationship is given a lot of unique dimension. Plenty of movies have given these sorts of connections a superficial treatment, but the script by Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam stays very focused on how their individual issues affect each other in unexpected ways.

Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story (Film)

Directed by: Jyllian Gunther, Stephanie Schwam
Featuring: Robin Byrd, Cheri Oteri, Annie Sprinkle, Sandra Bernhard, Porsche Lynn, Heather Hunter, Lou Cass, Kirsten Fleming, Bob Morris, Michael Musto
Streaming on: HBO Max

Make sure the kids aren’t in the room if you fire up this documentary about a television pioneer, whose right to put full frontal nudity on TV went to the Supreme Court in 1996. Robin Byrd’s call-in cable access show, launched in 1977, featured porn stars and strippers and frank talk about sex (including Byrd’s fierce urging, during the rise of the AIDS epidemic, that all her viewers use condoms) — she was so well-known to New Yorkers during her heyday that Cheri Oteri parodied her on Saturday Night Live in the ’90s. She’s a woman who’s lived a hell of a life, and this documentary captures not just the scope of her impact on the world, but her sweet, loving, decades-long relationship with husband Shelly.

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Blast From the Past

The home screens of streaming services are always packed with the latest new releases, but we don’t spend enough time appreciating how much good library content is streaming across all of these platforms. Each week, Stream On will spotlight one less-than-new favorite (must pre-date the founding of Consequence, so 15 years or older) that deserves attention from modern-day eyes.

American Psycho (Film)

Directed by: Mary Harron
Cast: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, Samantha Mathis, Matt Ross, Bill Sage, Chloë Sevigny, Cara Seymour, Justin Theroux, Guinevere Turner, Reese Witherspoon
Streaming on: Prime Video, Hulu, The Roku Channel

This newsletter is arriving a little late in your inbox and it’s Ryan Murphy’s fault, as I had to do an all-day binge on Thursday of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, a pretty inept attempt by a male showrunner to understand the psychology of female serial killers. No better palate cleanser, then, than Mary Harron’s brilliant adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s notorious novel about a fictional serial killer named Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale — hilariously when I first typed the character name just now, I wrote “Batman,” which, apt). Harron and co-screenwriter Guinevere Turner take unflinching yet funny aim at Patrick’s preening masculinity and frustrated rage; it’s one of the great book adaptations, and a ruthless breakdown of the mystique around serial killers as well.

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A Special Guest Recommends!

Liz isn’t the only person in the world capable of suggesting stuff for people to watch… So each week, Stream On will now feature picks from a special guest! Said special guest could be literally anyone from the world of entertainment — actors, writers, directors, musicians, or anyone else Liz thinks might be watching something interesting.

This Week: Will Brill, Gillian Jacobs, and Rob Lowe!

Who Are They? The three stars of The Musical, a truly demented comedy that premiered at this year’s Sundance! Will Brill stars as Doug, a disgruntled playwright/middle school teacher who decides to take revenge on the school’s Principal Brady (Rob Lowe) when Brady starts dating Doug’s ex Abigail (Gillian Jacobs). Doug’s revenge comes in the form of an original musical performed by his students that… It’s a sequence I really can’t describe, but you’ll never hear Enigma’s “Return To Innocence” the same way again.

The final performance of the musical was a big factor in why all three actors wanted to do the movie, they explained during a recent junket interview. Will said it made him want to do the movie for free, a reaction Rob agreed with: “I keep using the word audacious, but there’s no other way to describe it.” He remembers that the Sundance premiere was “raucous,” because “people are starving for something that is brave, where you can’t imagine how it ever got past the gatekeepers and got made.”

The final product is an achievement that Gillian says is a real tribute to writer Alexander Heller and director Giselle Bonilla. “This director-writer combination, we’re here at the beginning, but I think they’re both going to have very big and long careers. I’m glad to be in film number one.”

What Do They Recommend? All three actors came up with some great picks on the fly! (Rob actually consulted a list he has on his phone of things he recently watched — stars, they’re just like us!)

Gillian Jacobs: “The American version of Getting On (HBO Max), a show that ran for a few seasons on HBO with a phenomenal cast. Tonally, I think it’s one of the most interesting shows I’ve ever watched, where it’s both heartbreakingly serious and stupidly funny in the same episode. I feel like that show did not get the recognition or love that it deserves, and so I always want people to watch Getting On.”

Will Brill: “I just rewatched both Dark on Netflix and Deadwood on HBO Max and they’re both so good. I mean, such phenomenal television-making.”

Rob Lowe: “I’m going to go with Marathon Man (Paramount+, Kanopy). As good a thriller as you’re ever gonna see. Insane performances. And I will never, ever be able to jog the Central Park reservoir without thinking about that movie and Laurence Olivier and his amazing work in that. It is a true crackerjack movie.”

Thank you so much to Gillian, Will, and Rob for their picks! The Musical is in theaters now.

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One Last One Before Bed

Finally, let’s spotlight a movie or TV show that’s not only great, but won’t take up too much of your time: Think of this section as the answer to the question “What’s something I can watch before hitting the hay, that won’t keep me up too late?” The only rule is that it has to be less than 95 minutes if it’s a movie, or less than 30 minutes an episode if it’s a TV show. Otherwise, sky’s the limit!

Drunk History (Short)

Created by: Derek Waters, Jeremy Konner
Cast: Marisha Ray, Meghan Trainor, Derek Waters
Streaming on: YouTube

Oh man, Drunk History is back! What delightful news that is! And this first short, released to YouTube, features Meghan Trainor playing Madonna in a reenactment of her infamous 1984 MTV VMAs performance… as narrated by the very drunk Marisha Ray. Drunk History always thrived in a short-form context and so here’s hoping its new life on YouTube is long and fruitful. Though not that long and fruitful, for the sake of poor Derek Waters’ liver.

We’ll be back next week with more picks — in the meantime, stay safe out there, or better yet stay inside, where it’s definitely safe, and there’s so much film and TV to watch. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter!