Season’s streamings
New offerings for December.
Streaming highlights from the December calendars of major streaming and cable on-demand services:
Dec. 4
The Indian Doctor (Acorn): Northern Exposure meets Doc Martin and Poldark in this dramedy about a new physician (Sanjeev Bhaskar) from New Delhi who winds up assigned to a Welsh mining village instead of the posh London hospital he was hoping for.
Dec. 6
Shut Eye (Hulu): Former Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi joins the cast for Season 2, which finds protagonists Charlie and Linda Haverford ( Burn Notice’s Jeffrey Donovan and KaDee Strickland) trying to rebuild the trust in their marriage.
Dec. 8
The Crown (Netflix): The arrival of the 1960s tests both the marriage and reign of Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy, in her second and final season as the young British monarch).
The Grand Tour (Amazon): Everything old (such as catastrophic accidents involving co-host Richard Hammond, building amphibious cars and making jalopies do things they were absolutely not built for) is new again as the former Top Gear trio begins its second season on Amazon.
Dec. 12
Judd Apatow: The Return (Netflix): The director/producer of such films as Knocked Up and Trainwreck tries stand-up comedy for the first time in 25 years.
Dec. 15
Jean Claude Van Johnson (Amazon): The Belgian action-movie star comes out of retirement — as a cover for his work as an operative. His handler is played by Cosby Show matriarch Phylicia Rashad. (Damme, we didn’t see that one coming.)
Dec. 18
Gunpowder (HBO Go, HBO Now): You won’t see Jon Snow until 2018 but you can see Game of Thrones star Kit Harington in this three-part miniseries. He plays one of his own ancestors, Robert Catesby, who led oppressed Catholics in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to assassinate Protestant King James I. Tom Cullen ( Downton Abbey) plays the conspiracy’s most memorable member, Guy Fawkes.
Dec. 22
Fuller House (Netflix): The Tanner clan delivers its third season just in time for the arrival of holiday guests in need of family-friendly fare.
The Last Post (Amazon): Peter Moffat, who wrote the source material for HBO’s acclaimed The Night Of, mined his own family memories for this six-episode series examining the lives of Royal Military Police officers working in Yemen during the 1960s.
Dec. 31
Dave Chappelle: Equanimity (Netflix): If you don’t feel like watching pop stars lip-sync badly or Anderson Cooper adjusting to a new co-host, then consider ushering out 2017 with the comedy veteran, who shot this stand-up special in his hometown of Washington, D.C. He may not be able to make sense of the year gone by, but he can at least make it funny.
Who Years Eve (Britbox): Doctor Who fans, put on your tweed coat, bow tie and floor-length scarf and ring in 2018 with your favorite regenerated Doctors. Because as the saying goes, “Ain’t no party like a Time Lord party because a Time Lord party is not bound by typical temporal parameters and thus don’t stop.” (Cord-cutters looking for the annual Doctor Who Christmas special can find it on Amazon starting Dec. 18.)