Recommendations: Week of 2/10/25
What you should be watching on... Netflix
Hello dear readers. I hope you all have that post-Superbowl glow today. For a few weeks, I am going to be focusing on one streaming service at a time for my recommendations. Every year, I look at all my subscriptions, count up the monthly cost, then have a little cartoon eye popping out of my head moment. So in case you want to really focus on one or two, here’s what I am watching and loving on Netflix.
The new to Netflix pick: Younger
It is no secret that shows with modest followings elsewhere have been known to blow up when they come to Netflix. This happened, most famously, with Suits. That phenomenon was real enough to greenlight a spinoff show six years after the last episode aired. Something of this sort is happening with Younger, a charming delight of a show from the creator of Sex and the City and Emily in Paris. Younger is about the New York book publishing industry and follows Liza, a 40ish divorcée who left publishing when she was in her twenties to raise her daughter. With a divorce, debts, and a daughter off to college, she decides she wants to get back into the industry she loved and never really wanted to leave. She encounters resistance, though. No one is interested in hiring a 40-year-old woman to be an entry-level bright young thing. The book publishing industry is famously stuffed with brilliant young women at the entry and middle levels and Liza sticks out as past her prime. So she lies about her age, gets a haircut and some new clothes, and pretends to be in her early twenties again. What started as a ruse to get her a job becomes a tempting chance to relive her life with different choices, but can she outrun reality? And does she really want to be 25 forever? Also Hilary Duff is in this!!
The international Netflix pick: Territory
Anna Torv is good at picking her projects; if you run across a show she’s in, there’s a good chance it will be thought-provoking, thrilling, and tender. That was the case with her breakout series Fringe, a bendy sci-fi thriller that deserves revisiting. Territory is her swing at “Australian Yellowstone,” a family succession drama set on a cattle ranch. The show is violent, dramatic, soap operatic, but it is anchored by Torv. She plays the wife of one of the ranch’s sons, an insider and outsider all at once but also the only person who can truly run the place. If you’re missing Yellowstone and you want to know more about the Australian cattle business, this show is made for you.
The reality TV pick: Chef’s Table: Noodles
What is there to say beyond the obvious? Stories of great chefs cooking phenomenal pasta, all shot lovingly and scored by Vivaldi. This series is one of my comfort watches. You can throw it on and just revel in expertise and artistry, both from the chefs themselves and the people shooting and putting this show together. This is the most recent entry, but they’re all great. Perhaps a good palate cleanser after you watch the below show…
The thing you might have missed: Jessica Jones
Daredevil is about to be back on our screens on Daredevil: Born Again, a reboot of sorts of Netflix’s Daredevil, featuring most of the same characters and presumably in canon with everything that happened in the Netflix Marvel Universe. Netflix’s foray into Marvel in the mid-2010s produced some excellent shows that have largely faded from view in the recent Marvel disarray. None were as disturbing, violent, and perfectly written as Jessica Jones. Krysten Ritter played the titular character for three seasons, an embittered ex-superhero turned private eye with super strength. Jessica Jones is a trauma narrative; when we catch up to her she’s reeling from the experience of being controlled, imprisoned, and assaulted by a man named Kilgrave (David Tennant) who has the power to control minds. She’s trying to rebuild her life and help people without using her powers, but Kilgrave returns and forces her to confront her past. Ritter and Tennant are both phenomenal in this show; I’ve rarely been so frightened of someone as I was of Tennant’s villain. This show is NOT for the faint of heart, the queasy, or the person who just doesn’t want to deal with something this upsetting right now (which is totally fine!), but if you’re ready to gird your loins it is some of the best television I’ve ever seen.