If you’re just discovering Netflix’s fresh, funny “Grace and Frankie,” you’re in for a treat. Launched in 2015, it has garnered numerous Emmy and Screen Actors Guild nominations. Concluding its seventh season, it’s the longest-running Netflix series in history with a total of 94 episodes.

The series begins with Grace (Jane Fonda) and Frankie (Lily Tomlin) waiting for their law partner husbands to join them at a fancy restaurant. When Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterson) arrive, they announce that they’ve fallen in love and are leaving their respective wives for each other.

To say that Grace and Frankie are stunned is an understatement. While they still share ownership of an ocean-front Malibu beach house and enough alimony to live comfortably, these two frenemies suddenly become single seniors, embarking on an often frustrating journey of self-discovery and transformation.

Busy, uptight Grace is a total perfectionist, having launched a successful business called Say Grace, which she gives to her two grown daughters. Always status-conscious, Grace continually fights against the aging process, mourning the loss of her youth, often drowning her sorrows in vodka.

Free-spirited, empathetic Frankie is a quirky, sassy painter with more than a passing interest in shamanism and recreational drugs.

The first season focused on how they planned to rebuild their lives. Then the show delved into issues facing marginalized women of a certain age – with brutal, hilarious honesty.

Cleverly created by Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris, “Grace and Frankie” makes both me and my husband laugh-out-loud. Love and sex are frequent topics for these entrepreneurial octogenarians who design vibrators. While much has changed over the years, Frankie still swears by her homemade concoction of Yam & Honey Lube.

As the final season concludes, superstitious Frankie is so convinced that she’s going to die that she throws herself a funeral, primarily to hear the laudatory eulogies. The sitcom concludes tenderly with a clever Dolly Parton cameo.

Perhaps the days of older actresses being relegated to saccharine-sweet, doting grandmothers or helpless mugging victims has finally come to an end.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Grace and Frankie” is an endearing 8, streaming on Netflix. 

Perhaps spurred by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s multiracial/multicultural hit “Hamilton,” inclusive, colorblind casting has become more and more popular, as evidenced by Netflix’s hit costume drama “Bridgerton” and the upcoming adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion.”

Now, there’s “Mr. Malcolm’s List,” a frothy, Regency-era romantic comedy, directed by Emma Holly Jones and written by Suzanne Allain, based on her 2020 novel by the same name.

Set in 1818 England, the upper-class, marriage-market plot revolves around the season’s most eligible bachelor, wealthy Jeffrey Malcolm (British/Nigerian actor Sope Dirisu), who is seen yawning through a boring ‘first date’ at the opera with Julia Thislewaite (Zawe Ashton), a former debutante entering her fifth social season as a single woman.

Because unsophisticated Julia is unable to sustain an intelligent conversation, there will be no second date – an indisputable fact that Julia finds humiliating, particularly when a mocking caricature of her is distributed throughout London, captioned “Next!” 

From her cousin, bumbling Lord Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), Julia discovers that notoriously fastidious Mr. Malcolm has a checklist of 10 qualities that any future ‘Mrs. Malcolm’ must possess. 

Obsessively spiteful, scheming Julia summons her childhood chum, Selina Dalton (Freida Pinto), a candidly guileless clergyman’s daughter from the countryside, to London to serve as a set-up for revenge. While the outcome of this duplicity is predictable, the various courtships are charming, even endearing.

According to the press notes, Emma Holly Jones was eager to depict witty women who refused to conform to the ideas and boundaries that society placed upon them: “I wanted to reflect our society today so young brown and Black girls around the world would have their own Jane Austen-like film.”

On the Granger Gauge, “Mr. Malcolm’s List” is a swooning, subversively sumptuous 7, playing in theaters.

It’s rare that Disney/Pixar movies incite controversy but “Lightyear,” a “Toy Story” origin story, certainly has. The great kerfuffle revolves around a brief, same-gender kiss that was removed and then reinstated when Pixar employees said Disney was censoring “overtly gay affection” as Disney CEO Bob Chapek reacted to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.

Following the movie’s unexpectedly weak opening, U.S. Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted, “Buzz Lightyear went woke. Disney went broke.” But there’s no factual evidence proving that LGBTQ+ political pushback actually hurt “Lightyear” at the box-office.

A bigger problem seems to be confusion as to exactly how this animated movie relates to the iconic “Toy Story” franchise and, specifically, the Buzz Lightyear character, voiced by Tim Allen. 

In this astronaut adventure, Buzz, the square-jawed, stoic Space Ranger, voiced by Chris Evans, is based on the mass-marketed, hard-plastic action toy doll that young Andy favored, displacing his old-fashioned pull-string cowboy doll Woody.

Buzz is a daredevil pilot with a disdain for authority. During a remote mission, his large Enterprise-like spaceship is marooned on faraway planet ‘T’Kani Prime. As Buzz makes test flights, utilizing advanced technology, there’s a time gap, each trip catapulting him four years into the future.

Since Buzz has become a “man out of time,” members of his crew are aging, having kids and, eventually, dying – while he’s still trying to achieve ‘hyperspeed’ to get them safely home.

Buzz’s closest colleague is Commander Aisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), who winds up marrying a woman. It’s their brief display of affection at their 40^th anniversary party that aroused all the controversy. 

Providing comedic moments, there’s Buzz’s scene-stealing robot-animal sidekick Sox (Peter Sohn), as eventually Buzz teams up with Aisha’s granddaughter, Izzy (Keke Palmer), and two other Star Command trainees: ex-convict Darby (Dale Soules) and goofy ‘Mo’ Morrison (Taika Waititi). 

Working from Jason Headley’s script, director Angus MacLane emphasizes that it’s OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them.

FYI: Buzz’s spaceship’s GPS navigator (IVAN) is voiced by Mary McDonald-Lewis, who voices OnStar’s navigational system.

On the Granger Gauge, “Lightyear” is a spin-off 6 – in theaters now but should transition to Disney+ streaming soon.