Streaming

Romantic movies and new TV shows streaming for Valentine’s Day on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, and more.

Welcome to Boston.com’s weekly streaming guide. Each week, we recommend five must-watch movies and TV shows available on streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, and more.

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For even more great streaming options, check out previous editions of our must-watch list here.

New Movies Streaming

“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Renee Zellweger is back for a final time as Bridget Jones. After finally finding love and settling down, Bridget is now a widow. (Colin Firth’s Mark was killed on a humanitarian mission to Sudan.) As a middle-aged single mom, Bridget is encouraged to wade back into the dating pool by family, friends old and new (Emma Thompson, Isla Fisher), and even ex-lovers (Hugh Grant). Soon enough, she’s confronted with two choices: A younger, carefree option (Leo Woodall, “The White Lotus”) or a sensible one (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Zellweger is excellent once again as Jones, playing her in a more confident register now that she has entered a new phase of life, but with some of the loose cannon energy that made her an entertaining viewing companion in the first place.

How to watch: “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” is streaming on Peacock.

“Notting Hill”

If you were writing, directing, or performing in a romantic comedy in the ’90s, your guiding light was Julia Roberts. In Roger Michell’s “Notting Hill,” she gets a chance to play wish fulfillment for audiences, playing an A-List actress who is secretly down-to-earth and falls for a bookshop owner (Hugh Grant). The pair’s chemistry and comedic timing are sublime, selling the fairy tale story so well that you’ll be a believer when the credits roll.

How to watch: “Notting Hill” is streaming on Netflix.

“Sleepless in Seattle”

With the proliferation of online dating, it’s amusing to think about how Nora Ephron directed two ’90s romcoms about how absolutely wild it would be if Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fell in love electronically. With AOL’s free email service and “You’ve Got Mail” slogan yet to debut, 1993’s “Sleepless in Seattle” instead pulled Ryan and Hanks together through the radio, with Hanks attracting suitors nationwide after a Christmas Eve broadcast about his late wife. Ephron plays the audience like a fiddle, putting Hanks and Ryan tantalizingly close to each other without connecting them for the majority of the film. The duo are so winning, however, that you’ll forgive any plot contrivances when they finally get their happy ending.

How to watch: “Sleepless in Seattle” is streaming on Prime Video.

New TV Shows Streaming

“The White Lotus”

Everyone’s favorite social satire is back for a third season, this time taking place at the titular resort’s location in Thailand. The protagonists are once again cruel, vain, and wealthy, including a rich couple (Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey) and their son (Patrick Schwarzenegger), three women in their 40s (Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb, Michelle Monaghan) on a girls trip; and a couple defined by a significant gulf in age and attractiveness (Walton Goggins, Aimee Lou Wood).

Based on what I’ve seen of Season 3, the new season falls just a bit short of the first two. But creator Mike White has nevertheless found new ways to examine privilege through a diamond-encrusted lens.

How to watch: “The White Lotus” Season 3 is streaming on Max, with new episodes airing Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.

“Yellowjackets”

Similar to “The White Lotus,” “Yellowjackets” returns for a third season this weekend. And similar to its fellow prestige drama, the episodes I’ve seen remain entertaining even if they don’t quite live up to the first two seasons.

The show continues to jump between two timelines; the ’90s plane crash survivors enjoy the relative comforts of summer after surviving a long, hard, winter, while the modern-day grownups continue to reflect on surviving those years as circumstantial cannibals and the lingering trauma. The early episodes don’t seem as weird and kooky as Season 2, but there’s still plenty of time for “Yellowjackets” Season 3 to take another left turn.

How to watch: “Yellowjackets” Season 3 is streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime, with new episodes debuting on Fridays.

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