“Bridget Jones: Mad About About the Boy” is the first film in the British romantic comedy franchise to skip a US theatrical release and go straight to streaming on Peacock. That’s probably a wise choice because Bridget Jones’ fans are older now and it’s fun to watch at home.

Still a grieving widow, idiosyncratic Bridget (Renee Zellweger) desperately misses her beloved late husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), four years after he was killed on a humanitarian mission in Sudan. That pervading sorrow extends to their 10-year-old son Billy (Casper Knopf) and 6-year-old daughter Mabel (Mila Janković).

Although Bridget’s former lover/boss – now best friend – ever-flirtatious Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) offers support, meaning that he’ll watch the kids so she can occasionally get out of her London home, her love life is nonexistent.

Until one day, carelessly disheveled, ever-klutzy Bridget and her children are – literally – stuck up a tree on Hamstead Heath. Offering help are Billy’s starchy-yet-charming science teacher, Scott Williker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and a cheeky park ranger, Roxter McDuff (Leo Woodall). 

Bridget chooses Roxter’s rescue and he soon becomes her lover. But she’s in her ‘50s and he’s a 29-year-old biochemistry student. As she once again navigates the often-toxic dating world, self-deprecating Bridget is acutely aware of their age difference and confesses some confusion about her reawakening sexuality to her perceptive gynecologist (Emma Thompson).

Humor and honesty prevail in the mature, even melancholy script by series creator Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan – with Zellweger’s zany slapstick sensitively directed by Michael Morris.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” is a sweetly satisfying, screwball 7, streaming on Peacock.

One of 2025’s most anticipated ‘new’ Netflix releases – ‘Zero Day” – marking Robert De Niro’s first leading role in a television series – is a dreadful disappointment. Obviously ‘green lit’ before the Trump tidal wave swept the Presidential election, it’s filled with unfulfilled promises. 

As a political thriller, it has a provocative premise: a catastrophic terrorist cyberattack disables computers throughout the nation. Planes crash. Cars collide. Hospitals shut down. Wall Street, including the New York Stock Exchange, halts. All forms of digital communication cease to exist. The concept is truly terrifying.

Fear reigns – so the President of the United States (Angela Bassett) turns to former President George Mullen (De Niro) to head a task force with infinite powers to find out what happened and make sure it doesn’t occur again.

“We need a result everyone can trust, and everyone trusts you,” she explains.

Unfortunately, ‘believability’ erodes as soon as Mullen is shown doing his morning exercise routine, including swimming and running solo in the woods near his rural home. Secret Service protocols would never, ever allow that to happen.

Then it becomes obvious that octogenarian Mullen is coping with serious mental issues. Ever since his son died, he’s had hallucinations and keeps hearing the same chaotic Sex Pistols song – ‘Who Killed Bambi?” – in his head.

Has he been brain-washed, like in “The Mancurian Candidate” (1962)? Or is this perhaps linked to the sounds reported by U.S. diplomats in Havana, Cuba, that were thought to be sonic attacks?

One could only wish! Instead, suspicions implicate Russian agents, a leftist hacktivist collective, a Speaker of the House (Matthew Modine), a provocative talk show pundit (Dan Stevens) and an extremist tech billionaire (Gaby Hoffman).

Murky melodrama reigns as Mullen’s alienated daughter (Lizzy Caplan), a New York congresswoman, is involved with her father’s harried ‘fixer’ (Jesse Plemons) who’s being blackmailed by a hedge-fund honcho (Clark Gregg). 

Aside from his mysterious Israeli contact (Mark Ivanir) and long-suffering wife (Joan Allen), the only person Mullen will listen to is his former chief-of-staff (Connie Britton) with whom he secretly had an illegitimate daughter years ago.

The six-part limited series – created by Eric Newman (“Narcos”) with journalists Noah Oppenheim & Michael J. Schmidt and directed by TV veteran Lesli Linka Glatter (“Love & Death”) – should have been so much better! 

On the Granger Gauge, “Zero Day” is a paranoid, anxiety-propelled, frustrating 5 – with all six episodes streaming on Netflix.