FlixMomo

Films and series side by side

For a long time the cinema and television were treated as rivals. Streaming has ended that argument. The same services now carry both, the same actors move between them, and most viewers choose by mood and by the clock: two free hours suit a film, twenty-two minutes suit an episode. A useful guide should let you move from one to the other with a single tap, and that is how FlixMomo is laid out, with Movies and TV Shows next to each other in the dark bar at the top of every page.

The two halves were chosen on different principles. The films are recent, so that the guide stays close to what people are talking about now. The series are tried and trusted: comedies and family dramas that have already proved they can be watched again and again. Between them they cover most of the ways an evening can go.

Both halves share one standard. Everything here can be watched in mixed company, and nearly everything leaves its audience in a better mood than it found them.

Six titles to begin with

The home page features three films and three series. Wonder, from 2017, follows a ten-year-old boy with a facial difference through his first year at a mainstream school, with Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson as his parents; it is among the best rated films in the guide. CODA, which won the Academy Award for best picture in 2022, is the story of the only hearing member of a deaf fishing family, a teenager who discovers that she can sing. Paddington in Peru, from 2024, takes the marmalade-loving bear and the Brown family from London to the Amazon in search of his Aunt Lucy.

Friends needs little introduction: six New Yorkers in their twenties, one coffee shop, ten seasons and 228 episodes, first shown from 1994 to 2004 and on the air somewhere in the world ever since. The Office, in its American version, spends nine seasons at a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with Steve Carell as the manager who wants above all to be liked. And Downton Abbey follows an English country house, its family upstairs and its staff below, from 1912 into the 1920s across six seasons written by Julian Fellowes.

The sitcoms

Twenty-six of the series are comedies, and the largest group is about friends who behave like a family. Friends set the pattern. How I Met Your Mother tells a long story backwards, as a father explains to his children how he met their mother across 208 episodes. The Big Bang Theory, the longest runner in the guide with twelve seasons and 279 episodes, shares a flat with two physicists and the waitress across the hall. Community gathers a study group at a small college and turns every episode into a different kind of film.

The family sitcom is the second group. Modern Family interviews three related households, eleven seasons long, in the style of a documentary. The Middle spends nine seasons with a hard-pressed family in Indiana. Home Improvement gave Tim Allen a television tool show and three sons, The Nanny installed Fran Drescher's flashy heroine in a Broadway producer's mansion, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air sent a teenager from Philadelphia, played by a young Will Smith, to live with wealthy relatives in California.

The third group clocks in at work. After The Office came Superstore, six seasons on the floor of a giant discount shop, and The IT Crowd, a British comedy set in the basement of a London corporation where the technical support team asks every caller the same famous question. Schitt's Creek, from Canada, follows a wealthy family reduced to living in a motel in a small town they once bought as a joke, and The Good Place is a comedy about ethics set in a very unusual neighbourhood. The sitcoms page lists them by kind.

British favourites

Five of the series come from Britain. Rowan Atkinson appears in two of them, thirty-two years apart: Mr. Bean, the almost wordless comedy of a man who solves every small problem in the most complicated way possible, and Man vs Bee, in which a house-sitter wages war on a single insect across nine short episodes. The IT Crowd has already been mentioned.

Downton Abbey is the grandest: a household drama in which a change of fashion or a visiting duke matters as much as great events. Merlin retells the legend of Camelot from the point of view of a young wizard who must keep his gift secret while serving the prince who will be King Arthur; its five seasons were made for family viewing on Saturday evenings. All five travel well, which is why they have found audiences far beyond the country that made them.

Drama series and gentle adventure

The four series that sit outside comedy are worth a paragraph of their own. The Good Doctor follows a young surgeon with autism, played by Freddie Highmore, through seven seasons at a California hospital, and it is one of the best rated titles in the guide. Gilmore Girls is a comedy and a drama at once: a mother and daughter who talk faster than anyone else in their Connecticut town, across seven seasons of coffee, books and Friday dinners.

Eureka and Warehouse 13 are light science fiction. The first is set in a town where every resident is a genius and the sheriff is the only ordinary man; the second in a vast government storehouse of curious objects, each with a history and a risk. Both ran for five seasons and suit viewers who like their mysteries solved with a smile. The series page arranges all thirty shows by length.

Series for younger viewers

Eight series were made for children and teenagers, and they are a reliable choice when the youngest members of a household hold the remote. Drake & Josh pairs two stepbrothers who are opposites in every way. iCarly lets three friends run their own web show from an attic, and Victorious is set in a performing arts school in Hollywood. All three came from the same producer and share a bright, quick style.

Hannah Montana gave Miley Cyrus a double life as a schoolgirl and a pop star. The Suite Life of Zack & Cody moved twin brothers into a Boston hotel, Girl Meets World followed the daughter of a couple television audiences had watched grow up, and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series staged the famous film inside the school where it was shot. From Australia comes H2O: Just Add Water, in which three friends on the Gold Coast become mermaids whenever they touch water. The school years page gathers these with the films on the same theme.

How series pages work

A series page on FlixMomo begins like a film page, with the poster, the years on air, the cast and a summary. Below that come the seasons, in order, and under each season its episodes with their titles and first air dates. The 3,385 episodes in the guide are all listed in this way, so it is easy to find the one where two characters finally get together or the Thanksgiving episode you half remember.

The Watch now button on a series page opens the whole series on JustWatch, where each service shows which seasons it carries. Sitcoms can be joined almost anywhere, since most episodes stand alone. Stories such as Downton Abbey, Merlin and The Good Place are best begun at the first episode. The seasons and episodes page explains the layout in more detail.

Recent films

The 125 films cover twelve years of cinema, and they divide neatly into four periods. Thirty-seven come from 2014 to 2016, the years of Paddington, Chef, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Lion, Sing Street and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Forty-five come from 2017 to 2019, including Wonder, Crazy Rich Asians, Christopher Robin, Mary Poppins Returns, Togo and The Peanut Butter Falcon.

Twenty-seven date from 2020 to 2022, when many films went straight to streaming: CODA, King Richard, Belfast, Elvis, In the Heights, Jungle Cruise and Slumberland. The newest sixteen run from 2023 to 2026 and include Past Lives, Air, The Fall Guy, IF, A Complete Unknown, Paddington in Peru and Freakier Friday. The recent films page lists them by period.

Film comedy

Comedy is the largest group among the films as it is among the series. The Fall Guy is an action comedy and a love letter to stunt performers, with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Night School sends Kevin Hart back to class, Life of the Party enrols Melissa McCarthy at her daughter's university, and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga follows two hopeful Icelanders to the grandest song competition in Europe.

A gentler strain runs through Chef, in which a cook rediscovers his craft in a food truck, The Hundred-Foot Journey, where an Indian family opens a restaurant opposite a celebrated French one, and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which returns Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy to their retirement home in Jaipur. Maggie Smith is also the star of The Lady in the Van, the true story of a woman who parked in the playwright Alan Bennett's driveway for fifteen years. The comedy page sorts films and shows together.

Films for the family

Forty-four titles carry the family label. The two Paddington films in the guide, Paddington and Paddington in Peru, bracket a decade of the bear's adventures. The BFG and Christopher Robin bring two classics of British childhood to the screen, IF imagines what becomes of imaginary friends when their children grow up, and Pete's Dragon hides a gentle giant in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

The live-action fairy tale flourished in these years: Cinderella, Aladdin, The Jungle Book, Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and Disenchanted. Stories about dogs form another cluster, with A Dog's Purpose, A Dog's Way Home, The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Call of the Wild, Togo and Arthur the King. The family viewing page suggests titles for different ages.

True stories

Twenty-two films are drawn from real lives, and the last decade has been a rich one for the form. Business supplies The Founder, about the salesman who turned a burger stand into a global chain; Steve Jobs, set backstage before three product launches; Air, on the signing of a young basketball player by a shoe company; BlackBerry, the rise of the Canadian firm that put e-mail in the pocket; Joy, on the inventor of a self-wringing mop; and Flamin' Hot, the story of a factory janitor with an idea for a snack.

Sport offers King Richard, Eddie the Eagle, McFarland, USA, Home Team and Draft Day, a fictional but closely observed day in the life of an American football manager played by Kevin Costner. Science and art are represented by The Man Who Knew Infinity, Big Eyes, Stan & Ollie, Elvis and A Complete Unknown.

The most moving are about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Lion follows a young man raised in Australia as he searches for the Indian town he was separated from at five. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is the story of a Malawian schoolboy who built a windmill from scrap to water his family's fields. Togo honours a sled dog and his musher, and Goodbye Christopher Robin tells how a father's bedtime stories became the property of the whole world. The true stories page lists them by field.

Romance

Forty-five titles are love stories. The grown-up romances include Past Lives, in which two childhood friends from Seoul meet again in New York after twenty-four years; Crazy Rich Asians, which takes a New York professor to Singapore to meet her boyfriend's formidable family; The Age of Adaline; and Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy's story of an independent woman and her three suitors. Your Place or Mine and Home Again give Reese Witherspoon two warm-hearted comedies about starting afresh.

Young love has been the great success of the streaming years. To All the Boys I've Loved Before and its two sequels follow Lara Jean and her box of letters; the three Kissing Booth films, Tall Girl, The Perfect Date, Sierra Burgess Is a Loser and Chemical Hearts found audiences of tens of millions at home. Everything, Everything and The Longest Ride come from popular novels.

A third group is frankly escapist: The Royal Treatment, A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding, The Knight Before Christmas, Falling Inn Love and Upgraded, in which a young art assistant is mistaken for her employer on a flight to London. They ask little and give a pleasant evening in return. The romance page sorts the shelf.

Music on screen

Twenty-six titles sing. Among the films, In the Heights fills a New York neighbourhood with the songs of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again returns to the Greek island with more ABBA, Mary Poppins Returns gives Emily Blunt the umbrella, and Mean Girls turns a school comedy into a musical. Sing Street, Ricki and the Flash, with Meryl Streep fronting a bar band, Florence Foster Jenkins, Elvis and A Complete Unknown look at the people who make the music.

The series contribute Victorious, Hannah Montana and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and dance has its own corner with Work It, Feel the Beat, High Strung and Step Up All In. The music page has the programme.

Fantasy and adventure

Forty-six titles promise a journey. Jungle Cruise and Jumanji: The Next Level share a leading man in Dwayne Johnson and a taste for rivers and rope bridges. The Call of the Wild and Arthur the King head into wild country with a dog for company, Dora and the Lost City of Gold sends a teenage explorer to Peru, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople loses a boy and his foster uncle in the New Zealand bush.

Fantasy takes many shapes: the dream world of Slumberland, the folded universe of A Wrinkle in Time, the body swap of Freakier Friday, the visiting angel of Good Fortune and the grid of TRON: Ares. On the series side, Merlin, Eureka and Warehouse 13 supply magic and invention in weekly instalments. The fantasy and adventure page maps the shelf.

Christmas

Twelve films belong to December. The Christmas Chronicles and The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two put Kurt Russell in the sleigh. A Boy Called Christmas tells an origin story in the snows of the far north, and Noelle hands the family business to Santa's daughter. For romance there are Love Hard, Falling for Christmas, Christmas Inheritance and The Knight Before Christmas; for the family table, Love the Coopers.

The series add their own festive episodes, which the season lists make easy to find: nearly every sitcom in the guide marked the holidays once a year, and several of those episodes are among the best loved of their runs. The Christmas page has the full list of films.

How long will it take

One advantage of a guide that counts episodes is that it can help with planning. The shortest series here is Man vs Bee, nine episodes of about ten minutes each, an evening's entertainment. Mr. Bean has fourteen half-hours and The IT Crowd twenty-four. The Good Place tells its whole story in fifty episodes, and Downton Abbey in forty-seven longer ones.

At the other end stand the marathon runners. The Big Bang Theory has 279 episodes, Modern Family 250, Friends 228, The Middle 215, How I Met Your Mother 208 and Home Improvement 203. At two episodes an evening, any of these will last from one season of the year to the next, which is exactly their charm. The films are simpler to plan: together they run for about 226 hours, a little under two hours apiece.

The art of the ensemble

Most of the series here are ensemble pieces, and their casts are the reason people come back. Friends works because all six leads are equally funny and equally fond of one another. Modern Family balances eleven regular characters across three generations, and Community gives each member of its study group a distinct comic voice. The Office has perhaps the deepest bench of all, with a desk and a running joke for every employee.

Films can do the same in two hours. Crazy Rich Asians surrounds its couple with cousins, aunts and a best friend who steals every scene. CODA is a portrait of four people who love each other loudly, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel assembles a company of great British actors, and Love the Coopers seats four generations at one table. Watching a good ensemble is a little like joining a group of friends, which may be why these titles are so often chosen for a second viewing.

A world tour from the sofa

Taken together, the films and shows cover a good deal of the map. New York is the home of Friends, How I Met Your Mother, In the Heights and Past Lives. California hosts The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Good Doctor, and the small towns of the Midwest and New England belong to The Middle and Gilmore Girls.

Abroad, Downton Abbey and Merlin offer two very different Englands, Sing Street and Belfast two Irish childhoods, and H2O: Just Add Water the beaches of Queensland. The films reach farther still: Singapore in Crazy Rich Asians, Jaipur in the Marigold Hotel, a French village in The Hundred-Foot Journey, Tasmania and central India in Lion, Malawi in The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Iceland in the Eurovision comedy, Alaska in Togo, New Zealand in Hunt for the Wilderpeople and the Peruvian rainforest in Paddington in Peru.

Faces to follow

Several performers appear on both sides of the guide. Rowan Atkinson has two series. Steve Carell leads The Office, and Will Smith can be followed from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Aladdin and King Richard. Maggie Smith moves from Downton Abbey to The Lady in the Van and the Marigold Hotel, and Miranda Cosgrove from Drake & Josh to iCarly.

Among film actors, Emily Blunt appears in Mary Poppins Returns, Jungle Cruise and The Fall Guy; Reese Witherspoon in Home Again, A Wrinkle in Time and Your Place or Mine; Dwayne Johnson in two jungle adventures; and Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins, Ricki and the Flash and the Mamma Mia sequel. Noah Centineo, Lana Condor and Joey King are the faces of the streaming romances, and Ben Whishaw is the voice of Paddington in both of the bear's films here. The cast list on each page links these careers together.

Choosing by mood and by clock

The simplest way to use FlixMomo is to decide how long you have and how you feel. For twenty minutes and a laugh, open any sitcom at random; The IT Crowd and Superstore are especially easy to dip into. For an hour of comfort, try an episode of Downton Abbey or Gilmore Girls. For a full film evening that will please a mixed household, Wonder, Paddington and The Hundred-Foot Journey are hard to beat.

For something stirring, the true stories are the place to look, led by Lion, King Richard and CODA. For a date, Past Lives and Crazy Rich Asians sit at opposite ends of the romantic scale. For a rainy weekend with children, Merlin offers sixty-five episodes of dragons and knights, and for a rainy weekend alone, The Good Place can be finished from first episode to last and is all the better for it.

The top rated shelf

Forty-eight titles hold a place on the top rated shelf, which gathers films and series with an average of seven and a half or above from at least five hundred viewers. The series do especially well, since long-running favourites collect loyal audiences. The Office stands first among them, followed by The Good Doctor, Friends, Drake & Josh, Girl Meets World, Victorious and The IT Crowd. How I Met Your Mother, Downton Abbey, The Nanny, The Good Place, Mr. Bean and Community all score eight or more.

Among the films, Wonder, Togo and The Art of Racing in the Rain share the highest score, with Lion and Flamin' Hot just behind and CODA, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Sing Street and Past Lives close after. One section on the home page is drawn from this shelf, since it is the quickest route to a title that a great many people have loved.

Series of the 1990s

Five of the thirty series began in the 1990s, and each has aged well. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ran for six seasons and 148 episodes; its opening song tells the whole premise in under two minutes, and its mixture of clowning and sincerity made Will Smith a star. Home Improvement lasted eight seasons, with Tim Allen as the host of a tool programme whose enthusiasm regularly exceeds his skill and whose neighbour dispenses wisdom over the garden fence.

The Nanny put Fran Drescher, with her unmistakable voice, in charge of three children on the Upper East Side for six seasons. Friends arrived in 1994 and became the most widely watched comedy of its generation, and Mr. Bean, though its fourteen episodes were spread across five years, was shown in almost every country on earth because it needs so little translation. Parents who grew up with these shows now watch them with their own children, which is the best test a comedy can pass.

Series of the 2000s

Thirteen series started between 2000 and 2009, the decade in which the sitcom reinvented itself. The Office dropped the studio audience and filmed its paper company as if for a documentary; Modern Family borrowed the same device for three households. How I Met Your Mother played with time, The Big Bang Theory made heroes of scientists, Community parodied every film genre it could reach, and The Middle found humour in a family that is always one bill behind.

It was also a golden decade for younger viewers: Drake & Josh, iCarly, Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and H2O: Just Add Water all date from these years. Gilmore Girls opened the decade with its first season in 2000, The IT Crowd and Eureka arrived in 2006, and Merlin and Warehouse 13 closed it with adventure for the whole family.

Series since 2010

Twelve series belong to the years since 2010. Downton Abbey became a worldwide event and later continued in the cinema. Victorious and Girl Meets World carried the school comedy forward, and Superstore and Schitt's Creek, both of which began in 2015, showed that a kind-hearted sitcom could still find a large audience; the latter won every major comedy award in its final year.

The Good Place proved that a network comedy could tell a complete story with a beginning, a middle and an end. The Good Doctor ran for seven seasons from 2017, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series for four from 2019, and Man vs Bee took nine short episodes in 2022 to show that Rowan Atkinson had kept all of his timing.

Kitchens and tables

Food is a quiet theme of the recent films. Chef is the best known: a cook leaves a smart restaurant after a quarrel, buys a battered truck and drives it from Miami to Los Angeles with his young son, selling sandwiches all the way. The Hundred-Foot Journey measures the distance between an Indian family kitchen and a French dining room, and finds that the two have more in common than their owners suppose.

Flamin' Hot is a true story about flavour, The Founder about the system behind a hamburger, and Crazy Rich Asians contains a scene of dumpling-making that explains a whole family. In The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, meals are where plans are hatched, and in Paddington everything begins and ends with marmalade. These are films to watch on a full stomach, or with a plan for supper already in place.

Sport and perseverance

The sports films in the guide are less about winning than about turning up. King Richard shows a father coaching two daughters on cracked public courts with a plan he wrote before they were born. Eddie the Eagle follows a British ski jumper who qualified for the Winter Games mostly by refusing to go home. McFarland, USA builds a cross-country team from the sons of farm workers, and Home Team sends a professional coach to help his twelve-year-old son's side.

Draft Day spends twelve hours with a team manager on the busiest day of his year, and Arthur the King joins an adventure race through the jungle. Dance films carry the same message in a different key: Work It, Feel the Beat and High Strung are all about practice, nerves and the moment the music starts.

Stories about kindness

If one thread runs through the whole guide, it is kindness. Wonder says so in its first minutes and proves it for two hours. Paddington believes that if we are kind and polite the world will be right, and the films around him agree. The Peanut Butter Falcon is about a friendship that asks only loyalty, CODA about a family that learns to listen, and The Good Doctor about colleagues who discover how much a different way of seeing can offer.

The comedies make the same case with jokes. The staff of Superstore and the townspeople of Schitt's Creek become families of their own, the six friends of Friends are always there for one another, and even the squabbling relatives of Modern Family end each episode on the same sofa. It may be the simplest reason these titles are worth returning to.

Where to start a long series

A sitcom with two hundred episodes can look daunting, so a few pointers may help. Friends is at its best from the second season, once the six characters are fully drawn, though the pilot is a pleasure. The Office finds its warmth in season two. Community peaks in its second and third seasons, and The Big Bang Theory widens its world considerably when new characters join in the fourth.

Story-driven series should be watched in order. Downton Abbey begins with a telegram in 1912, Merlin with a boy arriving in Camelot, The Good Place with a woman waking up in a waiting room, and Gilmore Girls with a mother asking her parents for help. In each case the first episode sets out everything that follows, and the season lists on FlixMomo make it easy to keep your place.

Dogs, bears and other co-stars

Animals share the screen in a good number of the films. Togo and Arthur the King are true stories of dogs whose endurance astonished the people around them. A Dog's Purpose, A Dog's Way Home and The Art of Racing in the Rain are told from the dog's own point of view, and The Call of the Wild follows a pet from a sunny porch to the snows of the Yukon. Lady and the Tramp retells a favourite romance with real dogs.

Bears have Paddington, elephants have Dumbo, the whole jungle has The Jungle Book, and Pete's Dragon adds a creature of its own invention. These are the films to reach for when the youngest viewers get to choose, and adults usually find they have enjoyed them just as much.

From the bookshelf

Many of the films began as books. Michael Bond wrote Paddington, Roald Dahl The BFG, Madeleine L'Engle A Wrinkle in Time, R. J. Palacio Wonder, Jack London The Call of the Wild and Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book. Thomas Hardy stands behind Far from the Madding Crowd, Kevin Kwan behind Crazy Rich Asians, and Maria Semple behind Where'd You Go, Bernadette, in which Cate Blanchett plays an architect who vanishes just before a family trip to Antarctica.

The teenage romances nearly all come from popular novels, and several true stories draw on memoirs, among them Lion and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. On the series side, Merlin reaches back to the oldest stories in the English language. A household that reads together will find plenty here to compare with the page.

Why we watch again

Most of what is on FlixMomo was chosen because it rewards a second visit. A sitcom episode seen for the fifth time is a comfort, like a familiar song. A film such as Hunt for the Wilderpeople or Sing Street reveals new jokes each time, and a drama such as Past Lives changes as the viewer grows older. Children, of course, will happily watch Paddington every afternoon for a month.

That is the idea behind the watchlist as well. It is meant less as a list of tasks to complete than as a shelf of favourites to come back to, with a few new discoveries added along the way. The sections on the home page change order as the catalogue grows, yet the old friends are always a search away.

Inventors and bright ideas

A final thread links several films and shows: the pleasure of watching clever people solve a problem. The Big Bang Theory and Eureka make comedy from laboratories. Steve Jobs, BlackBerry and The Founder show how an idea becomes a business, and The Man Who Knew Infinity how a clerk in Madras filled notebooks with mathematics that astonished Cambridge. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is the purest example, a teenager reading a library book about energy and building what his village needs from bicycle parts.

Younger viewers get the same message from iCarly, whose heroine builds a web show with a camera and a friend who can fix anything, and from Warehouse 13, where every strange object is a puzzle to be worked out. It is a cheerful note on which to end a tour of the shelves: on FlixMomo, curiosity is always rewarded, and the clever characters are usually the kind ones too. A guide can ask for little more from the films and series it recommends, and a household can ask for little more from an evening in front of the screen.

The season lists help here too: once a favourite inventor, teacher or neighbour has been found, every episode in which that character shines is a short scroll away, ready for the next free half-hour.

The look of FlixMomo

FlixMomo is charcoal grey with a single bright yellow, set in a clean, slightly rounded typeface. A darker bar runs across the top, carrying a round yellow badge with the letter F, the name in spaced capitals, a row of links in small capitals and an outlined search field. The home page is a series of sections, each with a large heading, a line of description beneath it and a See all button to the right: trending movies, trending shows, top rated, sitcoms, family, true stories and the newest titles.

Every title is shown as a card with the poster on top, a yellow rating pill in the corner, and the name, year and type underneath. Cards lift slightly when touched. On a telephone the links fold into a menu behind a round button and the cards stand two abreast. The footer is arranged in columns, one for movies, one for shows and one for help. Film and series pages place the poster beside the facts, with the Watch now button and the country selector directly under the title.

Finding a title

There are four ways to reach a film or a show. The search field answers as you type and accepts a title, a name or a word such as sitcom, wedding or dog. The links in the dark bar lead to Movies, TV Shows, Sitcoms, Family, True stories, Top rated and the A to Z list. Each section on the home page carries a See all button showing the size of its shelf. And the A to Z page sets out all 155 titles in alphabetical order. The finding titles page describes each route.

The fifteen shelves overlap on purpose. Paddington in Peru stands under Films, Comedy, Family, Fantasy and adventure and The 2020s; Victorious under Series, Sitcoms, Family, Music and School years. A viewer who starts from a mood, a format or a favourite face will reach a good choice within a few taps.

My List and Watch now

Every page has an Add to My List button. Pressing it places the title in a personal watchlist, which opens from the Watchlist link in the dark bar. The watchlist is kept in your browser on your own device, so it is ready each time you return on that device, and each saved title has a Remove button beside it. The list page can also save the watchlist as a file, a handy way to move it to another computer or to keep track of the series a household is working through. The My List page gives the details.

When a title is chosen, the Watch now button does the rest. Select your country from the fifteen offered and press the button. JustWatch opens on the page for that film or series and shows which subscription services include it, where it can be rented or bought, and any free services with advertising that carry it. Series in particular move between services as contracts change, which is why FlixMomo points to a source that is updated every day.

Where the information comes from

The 155 titles were chosen by hand, and each summary was read before a title was admitted. Posters, cast lists, episode titles, air dates and summaries come from TMDB, the community film and television database, and the ratings shown on the cards are TMDB averages. The guide you are reading and the help pages were written for FlixMomo by its own editorial team.

A short glossary

A few terms recur in this guide. A sitcom, short for situation comedy, is a comedy series with a fixed group of characters, usually in episodes of about twenty minutes. A season is one year's run of episodes. An ensemble is a cast in which several performers share the lead. A limited series tells one story and ends, as Man vs Bee does. A streaming original is a film or show made for an online service, and a biopic is a film about a real person's life.

A plan for two weeks

For a newcomer, here is one way to spend a fortnight. Start a sitcom on the first evening, Friends or The Office, and keep it going at an episode a night. On the first weekend watch Wonder with the family and Past Lives after the children are in bed. Midweek, try Chef or The Hundred-Foot Journey, preferably after dinner.

In the second week, give two evenings to the first episodes of Downton Abbey, one to CODA and one to Sing Street. Let the youngest choose between Paddington in Peru and Merlin, and end with Man vs Bee, all nine episodes in one sitting. By then the watchlist will have a film half and a series half of its own, which is just how FlixMomo is meant to be used.

Questions and answers

The questions below are those most often asked about FlixMomo, with short answers. Fuller help is on the help pages named throughout this guide, including the how to watch page.

Questions