What to Watch: 10 Movies and Shows to Stream This Week

Among the monsters appearing on screen this week are fuzzy, friendly ones who try to make children laugh; Soviet-era villains who train children to kill; and a few wielding axes (and worse) at summer camp in the ‘70s. Here’s how to stream them—as well as a comfy romantic drama.

New Release: ‘Virgin River’

(Netflix)

“Virgin River,” a Netflix drama based on a series of romance novels by Robyn Carr, has a premise that is familiar to anyone who watches the Hallmark Channel during the holiday season. A woman from the big city moves to the woods to find happiness in the wholesomeness of small-town America. There, she finds community and love in the arms of a veteran.

In this series, created by a Hallmark vet, the woman is Alexandra Breckenridge’s Mel Monroe, a nurse practitioner and midwife who finds Virgin River after a life in Los Angeles. Her love interest is Martin Henderson’s Jack Sheridan, a former Marine struggling with PTSD who owns a local gathering spot called Jack’s Bar. The third season premieres Friday.

More than 3 billion minutes of the series’s 20 episodes were streamed in the first 10 days after the release of its second season, according to Nielsen, and it was the most-streamed program in its first full week of release on Nielsen’s list of most-streamed titles.