A week after decrying the state of TV streaming services, I found some things that I heartily recommend on Netflix, HBO Max, and Hulu.

Transatlantic is a new miniseries from writers Anna Winger and Daniel Hendler, the Emmy-nominated writers of 2000’s Unorthodox.

New on Netflix, Transatlantic is a seven-episode miniseries based on the heroic exploits of American journalist Varian Fry who was instrumental in evacuating 2,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees, many of them quite famous, from Marseilles, France in 1940 and 1941. It was filmed by an international crew, mainly in English, in Marseilles.

Fry was the first of five Americans to be recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honorific given by the State of Israel to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. He is assisted in his efforts by real-life American heiress Mary Jane Gold and real-life German-born Jew Otto Albert Hirschmann as well as various other characters who are composites of real people. Among the famous people depicted in the series that they saved are Hannah Arendt, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Marc Chagall.

Heading the cast are Cory Michael Smith (Olive Kitteridge, Carol) as Fry; Gillian Jacobs (TV’s Community) as Gold, whose money was used to bribe corrupt French officials; Lucas Englander (Catherine the Great) as trained economist Hirschmann, who chooses to stay behind to help smuggle refugees out of the country when he has the chance to leave; Swiss actress Deleila Piasko as a German refugee based on a composite of real-life characters who also chooses to stay behind despite the risks; Israeli actor Amit Rahav (Unorthodox) as British spy Thomas Lovegrove, Fry’s male lover (also based on a composite of real-life characters); and Ralph Amoussou (TV’s Missions) as Paul Kandjo, a Nigerian refugee, yet another composite of real-life characters in the hotel where he is the head concierge, who helps hide some of the refugees. Corey Stoll plays the principal villain, a fictionalized bureaucratic U.S. consul.

It’s best not to know too much about the real-life characters to spoil the suspense of what happens to them. I will tell you, though, that the three fictionalized romances, an inter-racial one, a gay one, and an older woman-younger man one, will not survive though the characters involved will. One, whose life seemed to be in constant danger in the series, lived to be 97.

Also available on Netflix is Winger and Hendler’s Unorthodox, the 2000 four-episode miniseries that won an Emmy for director Maria Schrader (I’m Your Man, She Said). It also won Independent Spirit TV awards for its stars, Shira Haas and Amit Rahav.

Israeli-born Haas plays a sheltered 19-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish girl from Williamsburg, Brooklyn who a year after her arranged marriage to an equally sheltered young ultra-Orthodox man (Transtlantic’s Amit Rahav) runs away to Berlin where her estranged mother lives with her lesbian lover. The girl’s husband and his cousin, the family enforcer, pursue her while she seeks a new life in the exciting Berlin music scene.

Filmed mainly in English in Brooklyn and Berlin, the film is an unsparing look at a closed society and the will-she-or-won’t-she-make-it world of the escapee based on the real-life exploits of writer Deborah Feldman.

Both miniseries are well worth your time.

Also new on Netflix is the box-office disappointment, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody.

Although the film is basically a greatest hits musical, there are enough dramatic moments to keep you interested between the songs even if it barely scratches the surface of Houston’s turbulent life. British actress Naomi Ackie (Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker) acquits herself well, nicely lip-synching to Houston’s vocals with strong support from Tamara Tunie as her mother, gospel singer Cissy Houston, and Clarke Peters as her controlling father.

HBO Max, which will soon be just plain Max, has a wealth of classic films available including many films restored by Warner Bros., not all of which have been released on Blu-ray. Some of them are re-broadcasts from TCM with the introductions intact while some of the films look better than they did in their original broadcasts. No recommendations per se, just scroll on down and see for yourself.

Hulu is the go-to place for old TV series.

For example, you can watch the first season of Brothers & Sisters on Amazon Prime free but must pay to watch seasons two through five. Hulu has all 109 episodes, which I am wading through now, available for free.

This is a 17-year-old show that hasn’t dated at all. Sally Field replaced Betty Buckley, who filmed the pilot, to re-emerge as a major star at 60 as the matriarch of a dysfunctional California family. It ran on Sunday nights on ABC after Desperate Housewives from 2006-2011.

Tom Skerritt, Sally’s husband in Steel Magnolias, plays her husband once again, albeit dying in the first episode. Her five grown children are played by Rachel Griffiths fresh from Six Feet Under as her oldest daughter, an overburdened working mother; Calista Flockhart fresh from Ally McBeal as her second child, a conservative talk show host whose political views are the opposite of the rest of the family; Balthazar Getty as her oldest son, the one everyone seemingly takes for granted; Matthew Rhys in his breakthrough role as her middle son, a gay lawyer; and Dave Annabelle as her youngest son, a medic in Afghanistan who turns to drugs upon his return. Ron Rifkin as Sally’s brother also plays a prominent role in the family.

Introduced in the first season are Matthew Settle, Josh Hopkins and Rob Lowe as the men in Flockhart’s life, Luke Macfarlane as the client who becomes Matthew Rhys’ lover and eventual husband, Patricia Wettig as Tom Skerritt’s mistress and the mother of a girl who may be his daughter, and Treat Williams as the first of several new men in Sally’s life. Some will remain with the series to the end, others will not. The show is as addictive now as it ever was.

Happy viewing, everyone.