Welcome to What to Watch Right Now, our weekly rundown of the best shows to stream now. The constant stream of shows, videos, and films to watch online can become a sludge to wade through, so here are a few things you can watch courtesy of the Rolling Stone Philippines team.
This week, we revisit The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke’s first TV hit, Supernatural, as the former heads on to its finale. We also catch up with the gang of Abbott Elementary, which concluded its fifth season recently with a cliffhanger. We’ve also binged the Australian hit sitcom Kath and Kim, taking us back to a “pacific” time of the 2000s, along with eating disorders and Jessica Simpson. We checked if the hit Thai BL Duang With You is worth the hype (quick answer: yes it is). And finally, we caught up with the latest season of Fallout, which may or may not be just for the fans of the video game it’s based on.
‘Duang With You’
Pure BL cuteness at first. Then it gets spicy
If you’re allergic to cute shit, stay out of Duang With You. But it’s really hard to resist “TeeTee” Wanpichit Nimitparkpoom as Duang, acting like a puppy (a puppy!) who has a billion gallons of love to give the object of his affection, Qin (“Por” Suppakarn Jirachotikul). It’s been quite a while since a BL series won me over (the last was the 2024 Taiwanese BL The On1y One), so I’m pretty out of the BL game. But as a casual viewer looking into the Duang With You hype, Domundi TV’s latest success in a slew of BL shows was refreshing and irresistible, anchored on TeeTee’s affectionate performance and Por’s ice king thawing at the right time.
There’s not really much to its story at first: Duang likes Qin, but Qin doesn’t want to open up to anyone. What Qin doesn’t know is that Duang is a brute force of cuteness, love-bombing him until one day he challenges him to make Qin fall for him. We all know where it’s headed. It’s the getting there that makes Duang With You so insanely bingeable. We want to see how Qin’s feelings unfold amid Duang’s optimism. He does act like a puppy, a puppy so cute that you wouldn’t want to put him in harm’s way.
TeeTee and Por’s chemistry is undeniable, and it’s what makes the show so great as well. The rom-com beats work so well when you have actors like them. But that doesn’t mean it’s always just hijinks and college student chaos. The kilig moments of Duang With You are interspersed with quiet ones, letting us pause and breathe as this love story takes its time to its cherry finale.
You can watch it on YouTube, but the uncut episodes (the, uh, erotic scenes are handled so well) are on iQIYI. — Don Jaucian
‘Kath and Kim’
A sitcom that’s pure chaos and comedy
Even if you’ve never watched an episode of Kath and Kim, you’ve probably encountered it in some form. If you’ve seen that video of a curly-haired woman panicking over signs with the words “van dyke,” “veg out,” or “lebanese,” then you’ve met Kath (Jane Turner), the shoulder-padded, mom-jeans-wearing homemaker living in a quiet suburb in Fountain Lakes in Melbourne. Her daily struggles are mainly about her daughter, Kim (Gina Riley, who’s just about the same age as Turner), who mooches off her. While Kath is all about composure and pleasing her husband, Kel (Glenn Robbins), Kim is all about chaos and eating problems (yes, there are a lot of fat jokes in this sitcom, clearly a product of its time) and constantly tries to divorce her husband, Brett (Peter Rowsthorn). They’re joined by their neighbor Sharon (the great Magda Szubanski), sporty yet desperate for love.
It’s not enough to describe the show, which ran from 2002 to 2007, and the kind of funny it is. The laughs are hinged on language (a lot of malapropisms or exaggerated accents) or specific (or “pacific” as they’d say in in the show) situations (a frantic call from her husband’s mom makes Kim believe that she’s croaking and that they’ll be inheriting her money soon, which prompts Kim to go on a shopping spree only to find out her mother-in-law is healthy). But all were shaped by Riley and Turner’s keen observations of Australian social norms and global pop culture. The term “muffin top” was popularized by the show, owing to Kim’s habit of wearing jeans too small for her size.
If you need to ease into Kath and Kim, I highly recommend watching Trixie and Katya’s I Like To Watch episode, where they react to Kath and Kim clips so you can find out why Katya said that the show is “the best thing we’ve ever watched on this couch.” —Don Jaucian
‘Abbott Elementary’ Season 5
The usual classroom hijinks, but with higher stakes
Five seasons in, and Abbott Elementary still has a lot to say about the highs and lows of teaching within a crumbling education system (and yes, while the show may be focused on Philly, its cast of underpaid, undervalued, and overworked teachers definitely resonates with academics outside of the United States).
This time, the stakes seem to be higher for Janine (showrunner Quinta Brunson) and company — Abbott’s furnace is about to burst, which would be a major safety hazard for all students and teachers inside, and there’s less and less funding from the school district. On top of the school-wide problems, tensions have begun to rise between Janine and her coworker-turned-boyfriend, Gregory (Tyler James Williams). Now, Abbott Elementary has always followed the golden sit-com rule of resolving all conflict in the span of 20-ish minutes (which is one of the reasons why it’s such a comfort to watch). But for its fifth season, the show decided to let those conflicts breathe, leaving us with multiple cliffhangers that had us wondering if the Abbott crew could really save the day again. —Mel Wang
‘Supernatural’
Two decades later, and the boys still look good hunting demons
Now that The Boys is on its last two episodes, I’ve turned to showrunner Eric Kripke’s first TV baby: Supernatural. The show, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, carries a lot of the early elements that Kripke would work into his body of work later on. You’ve got the rugged and reckless male leads — demon-hunting brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) — and then you’ve got episodes and episodes of them shooting at ghosts, beating up demons, and looking very, very badass in leather jackets. It’s fun and, at times, campy, and if you really need it, there’s always the ghost of a larger plotline hiding somewhere under all the prop blood and early-aughts VFX. There’s 15 seasons of Supernatural to get through, but if that’s enough for you, tune into the unofficial reunion episode Kripke sneaked in on The Boys. —Mel Wang
‘Fallout’ Season 2
A deeper dive into the lore and gore of the Wasteland
It isn’t easy making a video game adaptation, but showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner proved they’re up to the challenge when they took a crack at Fallout, the massive role-playing video game franchise notorious for going very, very heavy on the term “open-world.”
Although the first season of the duo’s adaptation strayed away from the original source material — which itself was a blessing for viewers who’d never played any of the games — Fallout Season 2 was made specifically with OG fans of the game in mind. It brings its band of heroes straight into the deserts and casinos of Fallout: New Vegas, where tech billionaires and nuclear missiles reign supreme (now hey, why does this sound so familiar?). There are moments when the show works a little too hard to bring in the video game references, and sometimes I wonder if we really needed to bring in Mr. House (Justin Theroux) as the big bad (aren’t there other, newer villains out in the Wasteland?). But if this season of Fallout is all about paying homage to the games that came before it, then it more than delivers. —Mel Wang
