The Spiderwick Chronicles, on the Roku Channel

Arthur Spiderwick's field guide to the fairy world is the bestiary to rule all bestiaries. The old eccentric wanted to catalogue his discoveries, but the secrets it holds would be dangerous in the wrong hands. Mulgarath, the shapeshifting ogre, certainly qualifies as the wrong hands. He wants to eat all the humans in the world, basically because he is an ogre. If he successfully revives the baby dragons suspended in amber (like a fantastical Jurassic Park), nothing will stop him. Unfortunately, his primary antagonist is a troubled teen who cannot even count on his siblings in creator Aron Eli Coleite’s eight-episode The Spderwick Chronicles, adapted from Holly Black & Tony DiTerlizzi’s YA novels, which premieres Friday on the Roku Channel.

Reluctantly, freshly divorced Helen Grace relocates her three kids to Henson, Michigan (it is New England in the books), because of Jared’s “troubles.” He is the bad twin, whereas Simon is the good twin. Their older sister Mallory largely fends for herself. Both resent Jared for forcing them out of Brooklyn, where their deadbeat dad still lives, but Simon still tries his best to defend his brother.

Of course, everyone blames Jared for the strange things that happen in the old Spiderwick manor. Mostly, they are the work of Thimbletack, an annoying winged fairy-beast who lives in the Spiderwick walls. Supposedly, he is a good friend of Helen’s institutionalized Aunt Lucinda Spiderwick, Arthur’s widow. As you might assume, she is not as crazy as she looks.

In fact, she is the one who hid the pages of Uncle Arthur’s field guide around Henson and then charmed herself into forgetting, so Mulgarath could not trick her into revealing the locations. Instead, he lured the Graces to Spiderwick, so they would find them for him.

That gets to one of the biggest problems plaguing Coilete’s adaptation. Arguably, the Graces should be able to foil Mulgarath by simply sitting on their hands and doing nothing. Since the pages are magically protected, they are only vulnerable to Mulgarath once Jared collects them for “safe-keeping.” It is sort of like Mayim Bialik’s awkward criticism of Raiders of the Lost Ark on The Big Bang Theory, except it is much more glaringly obvious.

That is a shame, because Christian Slater is a lot of fun to watch playing Mulgarath, who has a big, evil DNR to spring on viewers. He is definitely the best part of the series, which is particularly ironic, since a lot of his business is original to Coleite and company (but not the ogre character).

Lyon Daniels will also drive most viewers to distraction as Jared, while Noah Cottrell’s Simon often expresses the audience’s exasperation with him quite aptly. Helen Grace’s unintuitive obliviousness stretches credulity, but Joy Bryant somehow manages to work out some interesting chemistry with Slater (in ways that cannot be revealed). However, the way the character of Thimbletack feels under-developed and often shoehorned into scenes, suggests a good deal of his screentime was cut for budgetary reasons.

On the other hand, the Spiderwick manor looks very cool, in a family-friendly gothic kind of way. Kat Coiro even creates some nicely creepy moments helming the initial episode, but she cannot match them in the second, nor can any of the subsequent directors.

Toast of Tinseltown, on Roku

Anyone who thinks British actors are classy hasn’t met Steven Toast yet. When you do meet him, you can’t umeet him. However, the abrasive blowhard has such a knack for bringing out the worst in people, it weirdly almost makes him sympathetic by comparison. After annoying his British colleagues during a few seasons of Toast of London, he takes a shot at Hollywood in creators Arthur Mathews & Matt Berry’s six-episode sequel series Toast of Tinseltown, which premieres today on the Roku Channel.

Toast comes to Hollywood with the delusional understanding he will co-star in the next Star Wars film. Of course, his long-suffering agent is happy to have a break from him, referring him to her Hollywood colleague, Brooke Hooberman, who specializes in Brits. She also works out of her car, sort of like the Lincoln Lawyer, but in a way that inspires less confidence.

At first, Toast assumes he is lucky to meet Russ Nightlife on the flight from London, because the stranger offers to put Toast up in his Hollywood Hills home. Then the actor discovers his host is ragingly neurotic and deeply anti-social. On the plus side, Nightlife’s housekeeper-caretaker Billy Tarzana is quite charming. She pretends to only speak Spanish around Nightlife, but she is happy to relax and converse in English around Toast.

The first episode is basically an extension of Toast of London, in which Toast’s agent sends him off to an anger management workshop, which seems to be suspiciously successful. “LA Story” introduces Toast to Hollywood, exaggerating its eccentricities in ways that hit somewhat more than they miss. As he acclimates to Hollywood, he thinks he has a torrid affair with a dominatrix and lands a role on cheesy medical drama. There is a weird, feverish Manson-family-influenced Western-style detour, before the series culminates by revealing the truth about Russ Nightlife.

Slip, on Roku

Mae Cannon is sort of like a Marvel or DC hero, because she travels through the parallel realities of the multiverse, but she does so with more sex and more Buddhism. On paper, that might sound like a more enjoyable way of doing it, but the experience quite confuses Cannon. The new lives that come with each reality are very different, but she assumes the similarities must mean something in creator-star Zoe Lister-Jones’ seven-part Slip, which premieres tomorrow on the Roku Channel.

Cannon always thought she had a cool job being an assistant museum curator, but she is starting to tire of her underachieving, somewhat boring husband Elijah. On the other hand, Eric, the hipster DJ she starts flirting with after her Buddhist-influenced, “Hungry Ghost” exhibition opening, is not boring at all. In fact, she goes home to his place. One thing leads to another—and suddenly, Cannon wakes up married to Eric, but they are both very different. He is now a bigger celebrity than Steve Aoki and she is tabloid fodder, who has been in and out of rehab.

Already reeling from her new reality, the stress of the paparazzi pushes the new Mae to her breaking point. However, she finds a safe harbor in the arms of Sandy, the owner of a lesbian bar, which leads to another reset, triggered by the consummation, so to speak. As the pattern repeats, each Mae always finds her best friend Gina. She also desperately seeks out Elijah, with varying degrees of success.

Although Slip is largely presented as a sitcom, the multiverse travels and the Buddhist references are surprisingly smart and intriguing. However, viewers should be warned there is more sex in the show than you would have seen in vintage late-1990s HBO programming. Just keep in mind, it is definitely not for kids.

In fact, maybe a little less sex and a little more Buddhism wouldn’t have been a bad call. Frankly, one of the best scenes of the entire inaugural season involves Mae seeking enlightenment from Monk Dawa, memorably played by Nicco Lorenzo Garcia, with understated intelligence.

We Are Not Alone, on Roku

It looks like we can also blame Richard Nixon for the alien invasion of Earth. He is the one who agreed to fund the Voyager probe, which the Gu’un just followed its trajectory back to us. If only he hadn’t been such a liberal big-spender. They are here regardless and they intend to stay. Poor Stewart is the junior bureaucrat recruited to help communicate the new overlords message in Fergal Costello’s We Are Not Alone, which premieres tomorrow on the Roku Channel.

The alien invasion was especially traumatic for Stewart, because their advance capsule landed on his best friend Robbie when they were leaving the pub. The Gu’un really don’t get how things work here, so the regional commander decides to govern the UK from Clitheroe, because it is in the dead center of the country. She adopts the inappropriate name of Trater, due to an equally iffy grasp of the language. The Gu’un all chose odd new “earthly monikers, because the sound of their real names cause humans to void their bowels.

Stewart lacks ambition under the best of circumstances, so he is very conflicted about working for the alien occupiers. However, he likes the generous new salary and the swanky new pad. Unfortunately, he will have to share it with his alien minder, the dim-witted Greggs. Even more awkwardly, the resistance pressures him to be their inside saboteur. Most of the Anti-Alien Alliance (AAA) does not inspire much confidence, except for Elodie, the pub owner he has long carried a torch for.

Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond (known for writing and appearing in the original Ghosts) have a knack for penning “stupid” sounding dialogue, in a smart way. They also make a drolly amusing Heckle and Jeckle pair as Cirsch and Darrenth, two flat-footed Gu’un sentries. Their soft science fiction is not groundbreaking, but they and Costello really keep the dialogue consistently snappy.

Heathers: The Musical, on Roku Channel

Seriously, Gen X really did have to work harder than subsequent generations. For instance, our high school mean girls had to bully fellow students without the help of social media. Just imagine Michael Lehmann’s 1988 cult favorite Heathers with Instagram and TikTok. Wisely, the stage musical adaptation never tries to update anything. It doesn’t need to, because the black comedy still feels contemporary. The tunes composed by Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy are also pretty rousing, as viewers can hear during the stage performance (or edited performances) Andy Fickman captures on film in Heathers: The Musical, which premieres tomorrow on the Roku Channel.

Heathers: The Musical had regional and Off-Broadway runs here, but the original London production made it to the West End, where it was recently revived. This is that production. As you might remember, Veronica Sawyer (the Winona Ryder character) is somewhat shy, but she shrewdly takes advantage of an opportunity to ingratiate herself with the trio of “Heathers” who stand atop the school’s social food chain. Heather Chandler is the meanest of the lot. However, the freshly transferred Jason “J.D.” Dean (still Christian Slater’s best role) is not intimidated by her or the two dumb jocks she uses as her enforcers.

There are serious sparks flaring between Sawyer and Dean, but that threatens to snuff out her sudden popularity. After defying Chandler, Sawyer trundles to the head Heather’s house to make a groveling apology, but instead, she and Dean sort-of kind-of accidentally kill her. When they successfully make it look like suicide, they ironically turn her into an After School Special-style martyr. Additional bodies will follow.

O’Keefe & Murphy, who also wrote the stage-book, stay quite faithful to the original film, but they somewhat bulk up the role of Martha Dunnstock, Sawyer’s unfortunately overweight childhood friend, which works out quite well, especially given Mhairi Angus’s nice featured performance. Frankly, the sets are more colorful than you probably remember the film looking, while the choreography is appealingly upbeat and energetic, in a Fame-ish kind of way.

Of course, the show requires a strong Sawyer, which Alisa Davidson supplies. Her voice is impressive and she has a nice facility for comic timing. Frankly, she might have better chemistry with Simon Gordon playing Dean than Ryder and Slater had. Their initial courtship sequences are weirdly sweet and endearing, before it all descends into macabre chaos. After Sawyer, the most important character is probably her nemesis, Chandler, whom Maddison Firth portrays with entertainingly nasty flare.

Slugfest, on Roku Channel

It was a powerful comic book tag-teaming, but it was completely uncoordinated. In 1940, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon created Captain America (first comic book appearance March 1941) to fight Nazis. That same year, DC produced a special issue of Look Magazine, featuring Superman beating the heck out of Hitler. Those were the days. In many ways, it was the big comic publishers’ finest hour and a good example of their “friendly rivalry.” Directors Don Argott & Sheena M. Joyce chronicle the competition and occasional cooperation between Marvel and DC in the 10-mini-episode Slugfest, produced by the Russo Brothers, which is now streaming on Roku Channel.

Slugfest, based on the non-fiction book of the same title by Reed Tucker (who also appears as a talking head) was greenlighted for Quibi, but the bite-sized streaming service folded before it could premiere, so here it is now. The six-to-eight-minute installments are punchy, but together they do not tell a cohesive narrative.

Regardless, the first installment, “Nazis are Bad,” is easily the best. You have to give Simon and Kirby credit for taking on Hitler and the National Socialists. Cap was a hit, but he was not universally popular. In fact, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia dispatched police guards to protect Timely Comics (as Marvel was then known) from violent Bund protesters. What would Kirby and Simon think to see the current management of their old company desperately currying favor with a CCP regime currently conducting a campaign of genocide in Xinjiang, just to get Chinese release dates for their movies.

In contrast, “Halloween Hero” is a fun footnote explaining how the first unofficial Marvel-DC crossover story was hatched by a group of writers and artists for both companies. Throughout the series, Argott and Joyce stage the sort of quirky reenactments they used in Framing John DeLorean. The most colorful is Ray Wise, slyly chomping on his cigar as the older Jack Kirby in “Funky Flashman,” which chronicles the artist’s departure from Marvel to DC, where he infamously mocked his old boss Stan Lee.

“Reverend Billingsley” plays up the 1970s trippiness of Doctor Strange, which does not have much to do with DC (and the whole Age of Aquarius vibe of the mini-sode gets tiresome). “Superman vs. Spiderman” is a cool look at the crossover fans always wanted, but the two companies never thought they could pull off (with an appearance from Ron Perlman, as a bonus). Likewise, “Cancelled Cavalcade” is a fascinating chronicle of the dramatic 1978 “DC Explosion” of titles and the sharp contraction that soon followed.

“Kill Robin” and “A World without Superman” both present solidly entertaining (and weirdly nostalgic) pop culture histories of the murder of the second Robin and the hyped-up “death of Superman,” which of course, it wasn’t. “Send in the Clones” tries to do the same for Spiderman clone storyline, but it won’t have as much traction for casual comics fans. However, the series ends with what could be its second-best episode, “Just Imagine,” a tribute to Stan Lee, with an emphasis on his once in a lifetime stint at DC, reimagining their signature characters, the Stan Lee way.

50 States of Fright: MI, KS, OR, MN, FL

The Quibi short-bite 5-to-10-minute programming-platform folly was only in business from April to December last year, but it still managed to squeeze in two “seasons” of Sam Raimi’s horror anthology. They still didn’t have time to get to all fifty states, let alone territories like Guam. Nevertheless, if any of their series had a following this would be it, so fans will be happy to see Raimi’s 50 States of Fright will be available again this Friday on the Roku Channel.

To hook fans, Raimi himself helmed the first episode, “The Golden Arm (Michigan),” up in Hemingway’s and Nick Adams’ neck of the Michigan woods. The golden arm has nothing in common with Frank Sinatra in Man with the Golden Arm. It is the sparkly prosthetic of the old folk tale Mark Twain and scores of others used to tell. In this case, it belongs to Heather, the vain wife of Dave, a rugged furniture artisan, following her misadventure in the forest. She intends to keep that arm with her even if it kills her and even then, she still isn’t letting go.

Michigan probably boasts the most star-studded cast of the anthology, with Rachel Brosnahan and Travis Fimmel portraying the ill-fated couple. However, it is John Marshall Jones who really makes the three-episode arc work with the way he tells the tale as Dave’s friend Andy. Old man Clemens would approve.

Yoko Okumura’s “Ball of Twine (Kansas)” should have been titled “What’s the Matter with Kansas.” Regardless, it does a nice job tapping into both the nostalgia of road trips and the uneasy feeling you get when driving through long, flat, not-particularly-well-lit states like Kansas. In this case, the scenic attraction Susan and her daughter Amelia stop to gawk at, the titular twine, seems to exert an uncanny control over the entire town. Even Sheriff Stallings is rather unhelpful when Amelia disappears, but Susan is not about to be intimidated by their cultish small-town ways.

Ming-Na Wen really makes these three ex-quibis standout with her fierce axe-wielding performance as Susan. She is pretty awesome, plus Karen Allen is quite sinister, in an unusually understated kind of way, as Sheriff Stallings. There are also some cool makeup effects going on, as an extra bonus.