Do you still have Gotta Get Up stuck in your head? This Pitchfork article about the soundtrack for Russian Doll goes in deep on the soundtrack and the placement of songs throughout the series.

It was really a formality at this point, but both Jessica Jones and The Punisher have been canceled by Netflix.

A number of sites today are reporting that Disney+ has a number of Star Wars TV shows in the pipeline beyond The Mandalorian and a yet-to-be-announced-but-believed-to-be-happening Rogue One spin-off. These new spin-offs reportedly include:

  • Qi'Ra and Lando from Solo: A Star Wars Story. So, that’s Emilia Clarke and Donald Glover.
  • Finn and Poe Dameron from the new trilogy.

Huge if true.

Soraya Roberts has an interesting longread about the positive impacts of streaming shows focus on teenage sexuality, specifically with a focus on female masturbation. As Roberts points out, it’s a subject rarely touched upon in scripted media - YA books very rarely ever address it. But recent shows like Big Mouth, Sex Education, and Pen15 are normalising it (and conversation about it) as healthy behaviour. I know it wasn’t widely watched, but Netflix’s teen dramedy Everything Sucks also moved the needle on this.

Sex Education started out as a joke — the kid of a professional sex therapist becomes a sex therapist himself — but creator Laurie Nunn and her predominantly female writers fleshed it out, so to speak, to add more potency. “I realized it was an interesting way to have frank, non-judgmental conversations with a teen audience about sex,” she told The Guardian, “but always in a light-hearted way.”

If you’re not a comics person, first of all, you should pick up a few - comics are good. And not just superhero stuff. There’s a lot of great books out there - go to a bookstore and take a look.

But, if you are a non-comics person, you might be curious about the differences between the comic books and The Umbrella Academy on Netflix. Vulture has you covered.

You know that obnoxious friend of yours who will repeatedly mention about how there’s no danger of his favourite movie/show disappearing from his life because he has it on DVD/BD and doesn’t rely on streaming services? Well, you’ll be able to enjoy that same feeling of smugness soon as he (and it’s always a he) starts to find it difficult/expensive to buy a disc player.

Today came news that Samsung are getting out of the Blu-ray market in the US.

To begin with, Samsung would be competing for a narrow slice of a small market. While 4K Blu-ray disc sales have been growing rapidly, they're part of a declining industry. Overall disc sales fell 11.5 percent in the third quarter of 2018. It's a tough space to be in, and even brands like Oppo Digital have backed out. It didn't help that Samsung's players didn't support Dolby Vision (just HDR10 and HDR10+), ruling them out for home theater enthusiasts who either don't have HDR10 TVs or simply prefer Dolby's approach to HDR video.

Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter mounts a defense of streaming services for saving shows from cancellation, focusing on Amazon show Patriot and the just-cancelled Counterpart.

But this isn't just about a show I love being on the bubble and me being worried (depressed?) about its future. This is about why it would actually be smart of Amazon to keep it, just as it would be smart for someone to pick up Counterpart after Starz was dumb enough to cancel it. In many ways, Counterpart is a cautionary tale that Amazon should heed with Patriot. Beyond ratings — which are not the driver at subscription services anyway but are, reality check, still monitored by the people in the building — critically acclaimed series are smart investments, even if they're essentially loss-leaders.

Ordinarily, I don’t have a huge problem with shows being canceled. It sucks at times, but I do believe it is better to have loved and lost. Plus, I appreciate the economics of TV. But, the cancelation of Counterpart hurts. I understand why it was canceled (there is a regime change underway at Starz and a new focus on shows produced by the parent company). But… this also feels like a show that should be much bigger than it is and it just feels like the show never got a chance to ever be in the spotlight. I’d love to see how it would fare on Amazon or Netflix.

And finally…

Veep season 7 now has a trailer: