What I’m watching: an interesting hard-to-describe series on Netflix and a really poor thriller on Hulu.

Turn Up Charlie: On Netflix

My wife and I are both fans of the British actor Idris Elba. Many people undoubtedly were introduced to him by the British television series “Luther” in which he played the title role, a troubled but relentless police officer.

He has had many dramatic and action roles, but this series in which he stars and helped create provides a very different kind of characterization.

Elba plays Charlie, a Nigerian immigrant who had a successful break in the music world as a disk jockey in the 1990s. He was a one-hit wonder whose career disappeared as he let fame go to his head.

When we are introduced to Charlie, he is living with his aunt and working as a deejay making money at weddings and other events. He’s adrift in his life when a best friend from boyhood comes back to London. David (JJ Feild) has achieved fame and fortune as a film actor. He is married to a renowned deejay (played by Piper Perabo) and they have one daughter, a precocious handfull named Gabrielle,  (Frankie Hervey).

The couple’s marriage is clearly strained and the move to the United Kingdom was to provide Gabrielle with a more “normal” home life.  Through a series of events, they decide to hire Charlie as a “nanny” for Gabrielle.

At the same time, Charlie hopes his friends will lend him some assistance to re-launch his music career.

The show is at turns, funny, dramatic and cute. Elba certainly shows his range as an actor playing a guy hoping for lightening to strike twice. Charlie is a genuinely nice guy trying to fulfill his dreams while maintaining a front for his Nigerian parents.

What I liked was the fact that  in real life Elba has worked as a deejay. He brings a laid-back charm to his character.

The rest of the cast is solid with Perabo and Field playing a couple whose careers in show business constantly takes precedent over their relationship with one another.

What I really like about the show is that it’s not like anything I’ve seen before. It’s a genre-buster and a story with twists and turns – both are good things in my book.

Into the Dark: Treehouse: on Hulu

Blumhouse Productions has made itself a name with horror films. The company has produced such as hits as “Get Out,” “Us,” “Insidious,” “The Purge” and the last “Halloween” production.

It has struck a deal with Hulu to produce a series of feature films for the streaming service and I decided to try one.

I’m not happy that I did.

Jimmi Simpson plays Peter Rake, a successful chef with a TV career, who we soon learn is a jerk and a womanizer. He decides to get out of town when his ex-wife is getting remarried and travels to the family home now occupied by his sister, whom he hasn’t spoken to in three years.

I was never quite sure why he made this reunion, but I suppose that didn’t matter much, like many other of the details in this story.

His sister goes away on business – she is the local district attorney – and Peter invites in for dinner a group of young woman staying in a cottage nearby that is suffering from a power loss.  

He serves them dinner, drinks too much, passes out and then awakens to discover some very strange stuff. Someone paralyzes him and knocks him out. When he awakens he is chained to a bed and his guests reveal they are not only witches, but are they to wreck revenge on him for all of the terrible things he has done to women.

Oh boy.

Yes, there is a “twist” ending – in fact there is a double twist ending.

This is lazy, stupid filmmaking. It’s the kind of film that you kick yourself when you realize what a terrible movie it is and that you’ve dedicated two hours of your life to it.

There are other films in this season on Hulu but I will admit I’m a little hesitant to try another. I’m old and I really don’t want to waste my precious time on such slop.