Stream On This Week: Mountain Climbing and World Politics Ain’t Easy, Plus Some Elizabeth Holmes Homework

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 Boulet Brothers!

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This Week’s Picks

Tenzing (Film)

Directed by: Jennifer Peedom
Cast: Genden Phuntsok, Tom Hiddleston, Willem Dafoe, Caitríona Balfe
Streaming on: Apple TV

Tenzing will certainly not make you excited about the idea of climbing any mountain, let alone Everest. Seems hard! And scary! But it will make you appreciate the incredible challenge it represents — as well as the unsung labor of the Sherpas who do the much harder work of supporting these climbs. Genden Phuntsok stars as the real-life man who was part of the famous expedition that also included Edmund Hillary (Tom Hiddleston), and director Jennifer Peedom leans hard on documentary techniques to ensure that their effort to reach the summit is appropriately intense. Whether it can ascend the mountain that is awards season is unclear at this stage, but this one is a real crowd-pleaser.

The Diplomat Season 4 (TV)

Created by: Debora Cahn
Cast: Keri Russell, Rufus Sewell, Ali Ahn, Rory Kinnear, Ato Essandoh, Nana Mensah, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford
Streaming on: Netflix

I’d fallen behind on Netflix’s Emmy-winning political drama until recently, but the promise that Bradley Whitford would be in every episode of Season 4 drove me to catch up — and yes, it never stops being fun to see him and Allison Janney play President and First Gentleman (there has to have been some West Wing fanfic out there, imagining some version of this scenario). This new season is as packed with twists as ever, including one or two I wasn’t the hugest fan of, but it’s still a solid grown-up story (in its fourth season, too, which feels pretty special these days) and really the entire cast is outstanding, especially new addition Jodie Whittaker (who shows up midway through).

The Banana Bowl (Sports Event)

Featuring: The Savannah Bananas, The Texas Tailgaters
Streaming on: Disney+

First off: Yes, VisionQuest premiered this week, and I overall enjoyed it a good deal. It’s also going to be running weekly through November, so we’ll have time to chat about it here. In the meantime, I’ve been hearing about Banana Ball for a while now, but haven’t yet managed to find my way to watching a game live — hence me being excited to watch the archived live broadcast of their big season finale… Wait, that’s not the sports term. Championship game! That’s it!

Between a 10-minute rundown of highlights and history leading up to the big game, followed by the opening ceremony pageantry, the game itself doesn’t actually start until about 41 minutes into the broadcast. Also, brace yourself for a lot of Disney-branded promotion. But the actual gameplay is full of delightful trick plays (there’s a literal counter on the screen keeping track of them), and the between-innings silliness is pretty charming. If only MLB players were also required to be excellent dancers. It could only improve things, especially in the postseason.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (Film)

Directed by: Alex Gibney
Streaming on: HBO Max

So! Originally, I was going to use this slot to mention The Housemaid, the fun/horny thriller starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried that just began streaming on HBO Max. However, I’m instead stepping back a bit in time to 2019 and this HBO doc, which serves up a thorough look at the rise and fall of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, revealing exactly why she’s now currently in prison.

This matters because the incredible Nathan Fielder/Lance Oppenheim film You Can See Everything is now in theaters, and anyone planning to catch it might benefit from watching what basically amounts to a “Previously On…” segment. You could also go watch The Dropout, the Hulu limited series dramatizing the same series of events… coincidentally enough, also starring Seyfried as Holmes! Funny how it all comes together.

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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.

The Lair of the White Worm (Film)

Directed by: Ken Russell
Cast: Amanda Donohoe, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg, Peter Capaldi, Sammi Davis, Stratford Johns
Streaming on: Prime Video, Kanopy, Tubi

A wild pick from 1988 (shoutout to Consequence video maestro Tyler Franklin for the suggestion), this cult favorite adapts a non-Dracula Bram Stoker novel with all the derangement you might expect from director Ken Russell. (Heads up for cinephiles: His 1971 classic The Devils is also getting a theatrical re-release this weekend.) The Lair of the White Worm features a very young Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi getting tangled up with the mystery surrounding, well, an evil snake lady — it’s not a particularly subtle film, but where would be the fun in that? To be clear: This is campy as hell, to be clear, so watch accordingly.

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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: The Boulet Brothers!

Who Are They? The Boulet Brothers are drag icons (and partners, not actually brothers) who have been hosting the reality competition series The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula since 2016. Dragula can be said to be similar to RuPaul’s Drag Race, except for the tons of horror influences and a very different philosophy to drag as an art form, making it a nice change of pace from the RuPaul world. Put it another way: Dragula challenges can get very weird and very gross (complimentary). The first six seasons of the series are streaming now on Shudder, with Season 7 premiering this October. Perfect timing for Halloween!

What Do They Recommend? Dracmorda and Swanthula Boulet have a fascinating pick and some fascinating reasons for it: Disney+’s X-Men ’97!

We recommend it because the storytelling is actually really good. Sometimes you see an ad for a superhero cartoon and automatically assume it’s aimed at kids, but this definitely isn’t. There’s a lot of death, genuinely mature situations, and some surprisingly heavy storytelling. It’s exciting to see these classic comic-book characters given that kind of treatment, while still getting to revisit characters we all grew up with.

The art style is great, too. It feels completely ’90s, and they’ve found a way to really flesh out the mutant universe. If you’re a comics fan, you get to see all kinds of obscure characters that have never made it onscreen before, which is really fun.

For the Boulet Brothers, the women of X-Men have always been a huge aesthetic inspiration because so many of their costumes are completely goddess-like. Storm, for example, has one of the greatest superhero costumes ever. Then you have the Black Queen and White Queen running around in these incredible S&M-inspired looks. We’ve probably worn versions of those costumes ourselves at this point: thigh-high vinyl boots, straps, capes, corsetry. That whole heightened, glamorous, slightly dangerous ’90s X-Men aesthetic is very much in our DNA.

Thank you so much to the Boulets for this pick! Bite into the new season of Dragula on October 27th, only on Shudder.

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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!

Raising Hope (TV)

Created by: Greg Garcia
Cast: Lucas Neff, Martha Plimpton, Garret Dillahunt, Shannon Woodward, Gregg Binkley, Cloris Leachman
Streaming on: Hulu

If you hadn’t heard of this charming Fox comedy before now, well, you’re in for a real treat. The misadventures of the Chance family, following the pilot’s surprising reveal that the clan’s youngest member Jimmy (Lucas Neff) had impregnated a serial killer, make for low-key yet addictive television, especially as Jimmy’s crush on grocery store clerk Sabrina (Shannon Woodward) blossoms into a great little love story. Come for the all-star ensemble cast, including the incredibly funny Garrett Dillahunt as a real goof and the legendary Cloris Leachman as Meemaw, stay for the way the town of Natesville develops into its own little Springfield-esque world.

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!