18 Movies and TV Shows to Stream On Your Snow Day

Snowstorm duds are the best kind of duds: Many of us still get a snow day from work and we don’t have to worry about shoveling our sidewalks. What you can do, however, is stay in your PJs all day and watch movies. To help you take advantage of your day off, I asked Philly Mag staffers to share their favorite snow-day movies and TV shows that you can watch for free on streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. Here’s what I got:

Netflix

Jesse Eisenberg in The Double, which is available on Netflix instant streaming.

The Double: I watched this in a pillow fort on a chilly day last week. I highly recommend others do the same if they like funny / vaguely disquieting Dostoyevsky-inspired films. —Angelly Carrion

Emily Owens, M.D.: Starring Meryl Streep’s daughter. Emily Owens, M.D. is a cross between Grey’s Anatomy and Mean Girls and it also makes me smile. Plus, there’s only one season. —Marina Lamanna

Fargo: Because it’s a reminder that it could be colder, and because Frances McDormand won a SAG award this weekend. —Jack Cotter

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: I enjoy the irony of watching a comedy about grabbing life by the balls while I sit on the couch and do absolutely nothing.—Rich Rhys

House of Cards: My boyfriend has an unforgivable habit of agreeing that we’ll watch a series together, but then speeding ahead without me. I’ve been left in the dust with this one, but I still want to see what all the fuss is about, so I plan on binge-watching it myself. —Carrie Denny

Ida, one of our favorite films of 2014, is available on Netflix streaming.

Ida: Pawel Palikowski’s drama centers around a young nun-in-training (played excellently by Agata Trzebuchowska), who is encouraged to spend time with her only living family member—an aunt (Agata Kulesza) with a sweet disposition and extensive backlog of pain—before making her vows. It’s an absorbing and emotionally wrenching film that sticks to your psyche like a cold, grey fog. —Piers Marchant

Joan Rivers: Don’t Start With Me: This is one of the last recorded standups from the late, great Joan Rivers, and you’ll be belly laughing so hard, you’ll forget about that disappointing non-blizzard outside. She takes on everything: old people (irony!), the Kardashians, even Casey Anthony—and she gives some very compelling reasons never to swim with dolphins (they poop all over the tank). —Bryan Buttler

The Killing: Nothing is the antithesis to a glorious snowstorm (or dusting) and the squealing joy of children building snowmen than the relentlessly hopeless and dark crime series The Killing, all of which is available on Netflix now. I binge-watched it faster than House of Cards. —Victor Fiorillo

Lilyhammer: Snowy Norway on your snow day. —Art Etchells

Mean Girls: Because what better way to spend a snow day than watching Mean Girls with a big bowl of buttered popcorn and asking yourself, “Is butter a carb?” It’s okay to play dumb like Regina George and tell yourself “No, butter is not a carb.” —Adjua Fisher

Peep Show is “like a British version of It’s Always Sunny.”

Peep Show: It’s like a British version of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. What else do you need to know? —Holly Otterbein

Snowpiercer: Think Brazil meets Oldboy. Stuck on a train circumnavigating a frozen Earth in a post-climate-change apocalypse, a barely recognizable Chris Evans leads a band of untouchables and ruffians in their quest to battle all the way forward to the front to meet, well, not quite their maker. Tilda Swinton, who has given a career full of oddball performances, plays a villain with what can only be described as a loopy fascist brio. You’ll want to wait a day, think hard about the movie, then watch it again. —Joel Mathis

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Continue the adventures on the Enterprise with Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard as he and his crew travel around the galaxy exploring new planets. —Mel Stevens (Also on Amazon Prime)

Amazon

Red Oaks, available on Amazon Prime, was co-written by Haverford Township’s Joe Gangemi.

Red Oaks: This comedy, co-written by Haverford Township’s Joe Gangemi and set in a New Jersey suburb in the 1980s, is a coming-of-age tale about David Meyers, a recent college grad who’s working at a country club during his last summer before he has to face the world as a real-life grown up. It’s a breath of fresh air and good way to support a local all at the same time. Plus, I hear a second season is in the works. —Josh  Middleton

Transparent: Everyone has been talking about it. A day off is the perfect opportunity to get deep into it. —Art Etchells

Under the Skin: An exquisitely obtuse sci-fi freak out from Jonathan Glazer, that finds Scarlett Johansson as an alien cruising the city streets of Scotland in search of willing men she can lure into an oily-based death prison. The film gives us precious little in the way of exposition or explanation, leaving Glazer’s superior storytelling and Johansson’s extraordinary (and brave) performance as all we have to divine the nature of the narrative, which leads to a disturbing and remarkable cinematic experience. —Piers Marchant

Hulu

The Sarah Silverman Program is available on Hulu Plus. Such a gem.

The Good Wife: My very good wife and I recently started binge-watching this Julianna Margulies courtroom vehicle after avoiding it like the plague for years. (It just seemed “mommish.”) But Margulies and Josh Charles (who I love from his role as Dan Rydell on Sports Night) are great, but even better are the rotating guest lawyers, particularly Michael J. Fox as the cunning Louis Canning, Martha Plimpton as evil insurance attorney Patti Nyholm, and Carrie Preston’s tour-de-force as the brilliantly flighty Elsbeth Tascioni. —Brian Howard

The Sarah Silverman Program: It could be a mess. All the characters are horrible people and the plots are stupid. Fortunately, though, it’s hilarious. I’ve been watching it on Hulu Plus recently, and I had forgotten how funny it actually is. Those horrible characters keep saying hilarious things. And when you watch six or so episodes in a row, the plots start to make sense. This show is a gem. —Dan McQuade