There are scores of TV shows out there, with dozens of new episodes each week, not to mention everything you can find on Hulu Plus, Netflix streaming, and HBO Go. How’s a viewer to keep up? To help you sort through all that television has to offer, Flavorwire is compiling the five best moments on TV each week. This week, a British treat via Hulu, the return of Clone Club, and a disappointing dispatch on Sleepy Hollow.
My Mad Fat Diary on Hulu
Last week, Amazon made the second season of Catastrophe available to American audiences for the first time; this week, Hulu delivered the terrific BAFTA-winning British series My Mad Fat Diary to American eyeballs. Based on Rae Earl’s 2007 memoir My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary, in which she collected her diary entries from her teen years in the late 1980s, My Mad Fat Diary stars Sharon Rooney as Rae, an overweight teenager in 1990s Lincolnshire who’s just been released from a stint at a psychiatric hospital. It’s funny, heartbreaking, and surprisingly dirty — although since this is British comedy we’re talking about, we shouldn’t be surprised.
Orphan Black is back
Clone Club recommenced on Thursday with the fourth season premiere of Orphan Black. Possibly TV’s most confusing show, Orphan Black kicked things off with a trip to the past: for the first time, we got to see Beth Childs — the woman who throws herself in front of a train in the pilot, setting off the series’ chain of events — before Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) stole her purse and tried to step into her life. (If you need an explainer before heading back into the wilds of this show, we’ve got you covered.)
It’s a Miracle!
They alive, dammit! And back on your computer or TV or smartphone or iPod Nano screen as of today: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s second season is now on Netflix, and it’s funnier than ever. Will Kimmy and Dong reunite? What’s the deal with Titus’ long-lost wife? And can Jacqueline make it in New York with her paltry $12 million divorce settlement? All that and more!
Sleepy Hollow Kills Abbie
I confess that I’ve fallen behind with Sleepy Hollow, but the news that the show had killed off one of its lead characters, Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie), got my attention. Beharie and co-star Tom Mison, who plays Ichabod, always had incredible chemistry, and Abbie was a great character: strong, sarcastic, smart, and one of few black woman leads in an hour-long network series. The fans were not happy with Abbie’s demise, particularly since the character had started to become more of a sidekick than a lead, and since the show got rid of several minority characters in its second season. Where will Sleepy Hollow go from here? And more importantly, will fans stick around to find out?
A different kind of Mindy Project
The Mindy Project left us with a cliffhanger in its mid-season finale in December: Will Mindy and Danny stay together, or have his increasing demands that she stay at home with the baby force them apart? Its return to Hulu this week confirmed (via a somewhat disappointing montage; I want details!) what seemed inevitable: Mindy and Danny weren’t able to make it work. Now, Mindy’s a single working mother, which makes The Mindy Project suddenly a very different show from the “single gal looking for love in the city” kind of show it was when it launched. That’s the kind of organic, character-driven change I’d like to see more of, particular in comedies. I’ll be tuning in to see where the rest of this season takes us.