_:nbb4e288dc90f499c87a3f9c0ba162690xb0
<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Thanks to Valentine’s Day, February can’t help but be associated with the concept of *love*. And it seems like streaming services got this memo, because throughout this month, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime are bringing a number of charming romances to their respective servers. From the high-class melodrama of *Those People* to the sun-drenched sexiness of *Princess Cyd*, there will be plenty of love (and lovely narratives) to wrap yourself up in — even if you’re like me and don’t have a significant other of your own. (We’ll get through this together.)\n\nBut if you aren’t the lovey-dovey type, have no fear. All three streaming services are also gearing up with plenty of non-romance titles as well. If you are looking for a show to binge, Netflix is debuting two excellent new originals with the bilingual gentrification dramedy *Gentefied* and the dark semi-superhero comedy *I Am Not Okay With This*. For some noteworthy films, crack up with the campy *Hot Guys With Guns* or prepare to cry with the Oscar-winning *Precious*. Or if you want to go back in time with a *real* throwback, check out *Guess What We Learned In School Today?*, a scathing 1970 satire about the hypocrisy of sex-negative adults trying to impose their norms on a culture that’s quickly pushing their views into embarrassing obsolence.\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b67d2fce00085b76bd]\n\n[***Guess What We Learned In School Today?***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNDTOBymaaU)**: February 1st on Amazon Prime**\n\nThough *Guess What We Learned In School Today?* came out five decades ago, its central premise is surprisingly resonant today. Which is a shame, given it follows a group of parents in a conservative community who decide to form a protest group after finding out that their children are learning about sex education in school. Comparing such lessons to Communist propaganda, they attempt to fight the new, progressive curriculum, but quickly find their mission changing course when it’s revealed that the two most vocal members of the group are an impotent alcoholic and a closeted gay policeman.\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b47078780008b7f21e]\n\n[***Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lptlZe5EYDU)**: February 1st on Hulu**\n\nWhat could be more anxiety-inducing than throwing a birthday party at your house? Well, throwing a birthday party at your house when the majority of your guests are fellow members of the highly conservative church where your father is the pastor — all while trying to deal with the potential ramifications of your budding homosexuality, that’s what. So goes the storyline for *Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party*, a quirky and surprisingly human coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old boy trying to understand the world and his place in it. Starring the painfully underrated Cole Dolman in the titular role (who also stars in the upcoming [queer Sundance film](https://www.them.us/story/lgbtq-films-sundance-2020) *Uncle Frank*), *Henry Gamble* is a slice-of-life dramedy that’ll make you laugh and cry in equal measure. (Plus, look out for a pre-*Stranger Things* Joe Keery.)\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b47d2fce00085b76bb]\n\n[***Hot Guys With Guns***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uEh7CH-Xec)**: February 1st on Hulu**\n\nThere’s something boldly comforting about a movie that’s unafraid to wear its silly premise on its sleeve. Enter *Hot Guys With Guns*, a movie about — you guessed it — hot guys with access to deadly weapons. Starring *General Hospital*’s Marc Anthony Samuel and Brian McArdle as ex-boyfriends-cum-amateur-detectives, the film follows the painfully attractive duo as they try to solve a mystery surrounding a group of “sex party bandits” that have made a habit of robbing gay men at gunpoint in their most… vulnerable state. Unabashedly campy and charmingly low-budget, *Hot Guys With Guns* manages to be fun while also probing deep enough to expose the reason crimes like this happen with little recourse. (“Nobody is going to report these [gay sex party robberies] because there are too many famous faces and names.”) As its [IMDb page](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2719796/) describes the film, *Hot Guys With Guns* is like “*Lethal Weapon* with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover as younger, hotter ex-boyfriends.” Doesn’t that sound great?\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b57078780008b7f222]\n\n[***Margarita with a Straw***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zy3F0WVDK0)**: February 1st on Hulu**\n\nFew films can pull off a story as proudly inclusive as *Margarita with a Straw,* a 2014 Indian drama about Laila, a teenager living with cerebral palsy who falls in love with a blind girl during a semester abroad at New York University. Roughly based on a true story, writer/director Shonali Bose got the idea for the film when her cousin, who has cerebral palsy, expressed her very human desire to have a normal sex life. Handling its tale of disability, queer sexuality, and self-discovery with sensitivity and tender care, the film became a hit on the festival circuit, even nabbing a Best Feature award from San Francisco’s Frameline LGBTQ\\+ Film Festival.\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b67078780008b7f22a]\n\n[***Precious***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06ZF3zw1gHs)**: February 1st on Amazon Prime**\n\nDirected by Lee Daniels (the queer man behind FOX’s *Empire*), *Precious* follows an illiterate 16-year-old who is routinely abused by her mother and repeatedly raped by her father, who has impregnated her twice. Based on the novel *Push* by Sapphire, the film kicks into gear when the titular character is offered the rare chance to enroll in an alternative school, igniting a domino effect of transformative events that help Precious in the long run, even as it forces her to face hard truths about her reality in the short-term. Despite its dark subject matter, the film was elevated by knockout performances from a then-unknown Gabourey Sidibe (in the titular role) and powerhouse Mo’nique (who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her scene-stealing part), helping the small indie film become a surprise hit for both viewers and critics alike.\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b57078780008b7f224]\n\n[***Those People***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD7Nqlc-WCA)**: February 1st on Hulu**\n\nIf you ever wondered what a modern, queer version of Whit Stillman’s 1990 seminal debut *Metropolitan* would look like, have no fear — *Those People* is right here. Taking place in the highly exclusive world of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the 2015 film follows Charlie (an inescapably charming Jonathan Gordon), a young gay painter who has spent the majority of his life pining for the love of Sebastian, his troublemaking socialite best friend. But after a chance encounter with Tim, an older concert pianist from a wildly different walk of life, Charlie is forced to choose between the promise of real love with someone who is unafraid of expressing his true feelings and a lifetime spent hopelessly seeking affection from someone who continually dismisses his advances. Equal parts charming and heart-wrenching, *Those People* was an incredibly promising debut, marking a true arrival for writer/director Joey Kuhn.\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b5c55f9900084113c3]\n\n[_**Cable Girls**_**, The Final Season**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rontZbe_fG4)**: February 14th on Netflix**\n\nAfter four seasons of delightful melodrama, Netflix is ready to pull the plug on its original Spanish-language series about a group of women working as switchboard operators in 1920s Spain. Like most soaps, the series has touched on seemingly everything under the sun during its run, but it deserves special recognition for making ample space for a number of different queer storylines. Most involve main character Carlota Rodriguez de Senillosa, who entered the workforce as a means to avoid pressure to settle down with a husband, and Sara, an outgoing feminist suffragette. (Their passionate on-again-off-again relationship is the type that inspires the creation of [entire Tumblr accounts](https://carlotasara.tumblr.com/).) Despite its period setting, the series has boldly tackled subjects like queerness, polyamory, and the pains that commonly arise from a life spent in the closet.\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b57078780008b7f223]\n\n[***Princess Cyd***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2kNUMAE-jI)**: February 15th on Hulu**\n\nOne of the [my favorite movies of 2017](https://www.them.us/story/best-queer-films-and-tv-2017), *Princess Cyd* is the rare queer coming-of-age film from America that’s willing to focus more on the beauty of discovering your first love than it is on some impending threat or inherent fear about what it means to be queer. Following the titular Cyd, the film plays out over the course of a single summer as the 16-year-old high school athlete fights boredom while visiting her aunt, the bookish writer Miranda. By focusing primarily on the revelatory relationship that builds between these two seemingly different relatives, the film easily avoids genre cliches and unnecessary trauma. In fact, by the time Cyd decides she wants to have sex with Katie, the local tomboyish barista she meets while getting coffee on a lonely afternoon, she’s already comfortable enough in her skin to openly talk about this decision with her supportive aunt. *Princess Cyd* is the type of movie that doesn’t treat queerness as anything less than normal. It’s a surprise more films haven’t followed its groundbreaking lead.\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b57078780008b7f228]\n\n[_**Gentefied**_**, Season 1**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mFgMyqHZCE)**: February 21st on Netflix**\n\nIn recent years, Netflix has been making a conscientious effort to uplift the types of diverse stories that quite possibly might not ever even make it off the ground floor at other networks. The upcoming *Gentefied* is a great example of this, following an interconnected group of Latinx people who are forced to reexamine their way of life when the neighborhood they’ve called home for years starts rapidly changing from gentrification. Created by two first-generation Chicano writers, the new series is serious without being dour, defined by the touching sympathy it clearly has for all its central characters. If you were a fan of Starz’ [excellent](https://www.them.us/story/vida-queer-latinx-representation) [dramedy](https://www.them.us/story/vida-season-2-complexity-queer-spaces) *Vida*, you’ll definitely find much to love in *Gentefied*, which shares a lot of DNA with the Starz series, including an interest in the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as a refusal to pander to American audiences (characters speak in both English and Spanish).\n\n\n\n[#image: /photos/5e39e7b6c55f9900084113c5]\n\n[***I Am Not Okay With This***](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmXxfsZPeu0)**, Season 1: February 26th on Netflix**\n\nTwo and a half years ago, Jonathan Entwistle’s *The End of the F\\*\\*\\*ing World* premiered on Netflix and instantly became a cult classic. Despite its short episode lengths and distinct brand of deadpan British black humor, the show was widely embraced by American audiences. So it’s great to know that *I Am Not Okay With This*, Entwistle’s next show for Netflix, feels like one in the same, even as it boldly treads new ground. Based on a graphic novel of the same name, *I Am Not Okay With This* follows Sydney, an awkward new girl wrestling with the romantic feelings she harbors for her straight best friend while also trying to make sense of the mysterious new powers that find her spontaneously breaking holes through walls and accidentally causing enemy’s noses to bleed. A queer version of *Carrie* for the digital age, *I Am Not Okay With This* is a black comedy the whole family can enjoy.\n\n***Get the best of what's queer.*** [Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.](https://signup.condenast.com/)"
<https://www.them.us/story/streaming-guide-february-2020>