UNDERRATED

The comedy chops of Netflix:

Though Netflix often gets notice for all the bad it generates — a regularly misunderstood euphemism for a date, a troubling determination to further Adam Sandler’s career — it deserves credit for carrying the flag for comedy in stand-up specials and offbeat programming despite the middling results earned by attempts at new iterations of “Arrested Development” and “Wet Hot American Summer.” Recently it gave us the best of all in Maria Bamford’s “Lady Dynamite,” a show that finally offers the proper platform for her strange and deeply wonderful comic talents.

The Clientele’s “Strange Geometry”:

Maybe a band is asking for cult status if its big break is a musical cameo in a midaughts Keanu Reeves drama (”The Lake House”), but this London group deserves another listen with this 2005 album, just reissued on Merge Records. Led by the breathy, reverbsoaked vocals of Alasdair MacLean and framed with enough wistful atmosphere to score a ’60s film about a trying autumn at Oxford, “Strange Geometry” captures the best of bookish U.K. pop. Sample the surrealist spoken word of “Losing Haringey” or “My Own Face Inside the Trees.”

Ben Whishaw:

When you need a young handsome British person to portray someone bookish and easily underestimated (yet possibly the smartest person in the room), Whishaw should be your first call. Seen in a BBC production of “Richard II” as well as turns as a dryly arrogant Q from a few Bond films as well as an arrogantly dry reporter from the media drama “The Hour,” Whishaw has enjoyed a strong 2016 with roles as the vulnerable lover of a murdered secret agent in the miniseries “London Spy,” and he’s among the many strange pleasures in “The Lobster” as one of Colin Farrell’s character’s few friends.

Julian Lage’s “Arclight”:

A onetime child prodigy on guitar with a résumé that includes stints backing vibraphonist Gary Burton and the late master Jim Hall, Lage reached a higher level with a new trio album. On his fourth recording as a leader, the 28-year-old builds upon his 2014 duet recording with fellow guitar wizard Nels Cline for an all-electric album that adds a barbed but beautiful energy to his sound. Try the rock-leaning “Prospero” or the twilight-shaded take on the standard “Nocturne” that recalls Bill Frisell.