Entertainment
James Van Der Beek’s Best Show Is Unavailable To Stream
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Recently, beloved actor James Van Der Beek passed away at the heartbreaking age of 48. He leaves behind a rich, creative legacy, full of projects that have moved and inspired millions of fans. Understandably, most of those fans have been reminiscing about his performance in Dawson’s Creek, the popular teen drama that transformed Van Der Beek into a household name.
However, I would argue that his best performance was in Don’t Trust the B— In Apartment 23, an overlooked sitcom featuring future Marvel icon Krysten Ritter. In this show, he played a hilarious, fictionalized version of himself, one that Ritter’s character playfully dubbed “the Beek from the Creek.” Sadly, this show is not currently available to stream outside of buying individual episodes, which is a shame because it is one of the funniest series ever made.
Never Afraid To Poke Fun At Himself
The premise of Don’t Trust the B— In Apartment 23 is that Krysten Ritter plays a party girl engaged in a constant scheme: she finds new roommates, gets rent money upfront, and then drives them away with her increasingly weird antics. Eventually, she lands a roommate (played by Gossip Girl supporting actor Dreama Walker) who refuses to leave. The two ladies soon settle into a life of wacky television shenanigans, which also involve James Van Der Beek, who plays a cynical, darkly comedic version of himself.
Even though Don’t Trust the B— In Apartment 23 was a lighthearted TV comedy, James Van Der Beek gives a performance that can only be described as fearless. He is never afraid to be the butt of the joke, and he’s always in on the show’s raucous sense of humor. In an age where countless celebs are afraid they’ll be mocked by fans, Van Der Beek cheerfully laughed at himself across two seasons of unhinged sitcom entertainment.
A big part of his self-parodying performance involved poking fun at Dawson’s Creek and his former status as a ‘90s teen icon. It helps that he had such a great comic partner in the form of Krysten Ritter, who imbues the show with her trademark brand of acidic, playfully sarcastic humor. Her character isn’t impressed by being BFFs with a major celeb, and Van Der Beek’s character isn’t all that impressed at being a major celeb; together, these two craft a shocking amount of comedy gold.
Shamelessly Stealing Every Scene
While he’s a regular in the cast of Don’t Trust the B— in Apartment 23, James Van Der Beek isn’t the focus of the show; that honor goes to Krysten Ritter and Dreama Walker, who were basically doing their own version of the successful Two Broke Girls formula. This makes it all the more notable that Van Der Beek manages to steal almost every scene he’s in. Sure, the writing for the show is great, but it can’t be overstated how the Dawson’s Creek legend can turn even the simplest glimpse or line delivery into something jaw-droppingly hilarious.
This was what startled fans most about Don’t Trust the B— in Apartment 23: that James Van Der Beek is an almost shockingly good comic actor. He has often been written as a kind of generic leading man, and his career suffered for it; personally, I found his character the worst in the cast of Dawson’s Creek, despite him being the titular main character. In this later, much more cynical sitcom, he is unleashed from the burden of being a leading man, and he quickly reveals himself to be the funniest member of the entire cast.
The Best Way To Process James Van Der Beek’s Death
Fans of James Van Der Beek have been returning to his earlier performance in Dawson’s Creek as a way to honor his memory, but this arguably isn’t the best way to grieve the actor’s death. Many viewers watched that teen drama when they were youngsters, so returning to the Creek is a surefire way to stir up your own traumatic memories even as you process the loss of a Hollywood icon. This is why I’m so sad that Don’t Trust the B— in Apartment 23 isn’t available on streaming: watching this show is the best way to both honor Van Der Beek and unpack your feelings regarding his untimely death.
That’s because this is a show where Van Der Beek himself has moved on from the show that made him famous and is willing to constantly poke fun at something he once took so seriously as an actor. There’s a lesson in here for his legion of fans that instead of dwelling on the loss of such a talented performer, we should find joy in how many great performances he had to offer. And by watching Don’t Trust the B— in Apartment 23, you can stop crying about Van Der Beek’s death and do what the actor would have wanted you to do instead: laugh like there is no tomorrow.
Entertainment
How to watch Wales vs. France online for free
TL;DR: Live stream Wales vs. France in the 2026 Six Nations for free on BBC iPlayer. Access this free live stream from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.
The Six Nations started with a number of huge performances from the usual candidates. The best performance from the opening round? It’s difficult to look past France. They dismantled Ireland in front of a passionate Stade de France, making a big statement of intent as the tournament kicked off.
Next France face Wales at the Millennium Stadium. Wales suffered a defeat to England in the opening round, and will be hoping to see improvements over the next few weeks. Fans will expect France to win this one comfortably, but you can never truly count out Wales.
If you want to watch Wales vs. France in the 2026 Six Nations for free from anywhere in the world, we have all the information you need.
When is Wales vs. France?
Wales vs. France in the 2026 Six Nations starts at 3:10 p.m. GMT on Feb. 15. This fixture takes place at the Millennium Stadium.
How to watch Wales vs. France for free
Wales vs. France in the 2026 Six Nations is available to live stream for free on BBC iPlayer.
Mashable Top Stories
BBC iPlayer is geo-restricted to the UK, but anyone can access this free streaming platform with a VPN. These handy tools can hide your real IP address (digital location) and connect you to a secure server in the UK, meaning you can unblock BBC iPlayer from anywhere in the world.
Live stream Wales vs. France from anywhere in the world by following these simple steps:
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Subscribe to a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)
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Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)
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Open up the app and connect to a server in the UK
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Visit BBC iPlayer
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Live stream Wales vs. France for free from anywhere in the world
$12.99 only at ExpressVPN (with money-back guarantee)
The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but most do offer free-trials or money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can watch Wales vs. France without committing with your cash. This isn’t a long-term solution, but it does give you enough time to stream most of the 2026 Six Nations before recovering your investment.
If you want to retain permanent access to free streaming services to watch the Winter Olympics, the T20 World Cup, and more from anywhere in the world, you’ll need a subscription. Fortunately, the best VPN for streaming live sport is on sale for a limited time.
What is the best VPN for the 2026 Six Nations?
ExpressVPN is the best choice for bypassing geo-restrictions to stream live sport, for a number of reasons:
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Servers in 105 countries including the UK
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Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more
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Strict no-logging policy so your data is secure
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Fast connection speeds free from throttling
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Up to 10 simultaneous connections
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30-day money-back guarantee
A two-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $68.40 and includes an extra four months for free — 81% off for a limited time. This plan includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. Alternatively, you can get a one-month plan for just $12.99 (with money-back guarantee).
Live stream Wales vs. France in the 2026 Six Nations for free with ExpressVPN.
Entertainment
Mind-Bending Sci-Fi Anthology Series Is The Digital Age's Twilight Zone
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Sometimes you want to watch sci-fi anthology series like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, or Black Mirror for their existential subject matter without fully diving off a dread-induced deep end. That’s where 2017’s Dimension 404 comes in handy. It tackles the same kind of metaphysical topics while functioning as a straight-up comedy series. Narrated by Mark Hamill and featuring talent like Joel McHale and Patton Oswalt, Dimension 404 plays out like The Twilight Zone for the digital age.
Clocking in at only six episodes across a single season, Dimension 404 is a breezy weekend binge if I’ve ever seen one. It’s a satisfying watch if you’re into the above series but want to lean more toward levity. It’s still cynical and brushes up against the same moral and philosophical conundrums you’d expect from a forward-thinking sci-fi anthology, but it carries significantly less existential baggage.
We’ve Seen These All Before, But Not The Funny Versions
While I fully understand that shows like Black Mirror aren’t all doom and gloom and can be quite funny at times, they tend to occupy that lane more often than not. Dimension 404 leans into camp, comedy, and parody as its baseline approach to storytelling.
The first episode, “Matchmaker,” which premiered just months before Black Mirror’s Season 4 episode “Hang the DJ,” treads similar territory with its absurdist take on dating apps.
Where the Black Mirror episode hinges on the futility of modern dating, “Matchmaker” goes full absurdist, involving cloning, dating do-overs, and a campus full of men named Adam (Robert Buckley), all of whom chow down on pink slop while watching each successive version of themselves try to win the dating game. It’s the same subject matter but has a better sense of humor about everything.
The rest of Dimension 404 follows a similar pattern, with each episode feeling vaguely familiar but twisted toward comedy instead of dread.
Patton Oswalt portrays a movie snob who brings his own 3D glasses to a high-tech theater in “Cinethrax,” only to discover that a Lovecraftian monster is crawling out of the screen and face-sucking every patron wearing the glasses the theater provided. In “Chronos,” a young woman named Susan (Ashley Rickards) finds herself stuck in a time loop centered on her favorite 90s cartoon that nobody else remembers, and she has to break the cycle in time to submit her physics final.
“Polybius” centers on an arcade game that pulls its players into its realm, complete with ancient, biblical implications. “Bob” gives us the classic “what if AI has feelings” routine, except the titular machine is made entirely out of genetically modified human meat and is as disgusting to look at as you’d expect. And finally, “Impulse” follows an aspiring professional FPS gamer who learns the dark side of fame after slugging down one too many energy drinks.
Doesn’t Reinvent The Wheel, But Still A Fun Vehicle
Dimension 404 doesn’t reinvent the thought-provoking sci-fi anthology wheel, but it doesn’t really need to. There are plenty of genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, and everybody involved is clearly having fun with whatever ridiculous scenario they’re trapped in. It’s the diet Black Mirror, or the version of The Twilight Zone that mom says we have at home. I don’t mean that as a knock, but the series clearly wears its influences on its sleeve, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
If you’re a sci-fi fan who’s seen it all before, you know exactly what you’re getting into when firing up Dimension 404, which is currently streaming for free on Tubi. That familiarity doesn’t make it any less entertaining, though. For everything it may lack in originality, it’s still an engaging watch from start to finish thanks to the talent involved, and it swerves away from baseline expectations just enough to earn your attention.
Entertainment
Starfleet Academy Finally Finds The Sweet Spot For Storytelling
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
If we’re being honest, there have been plenty of problems with NuTrek since it premiered in 2017, but one of the more persistent problems has been figuring out what stakes a story should have. Discovery and Picard exhausted fans by having huge stakes, whereas early episodes of Starfleet Academy annoyed the fandom with hilariously low stakes. In the latest SFA episode “Come, Let’s Away,” however, NuTrek has finally found a storytelling sweet spot, delivering the kind of medium stakes that typified the Golden Age of Star Trek.
For better or for worse, Star Trek: Discovery was always a show swinging for the fences with high-stakes storytelling. Season 1 involved saving the Federation from Klingons who were intent on destroying the Earth, and Season 2 involved saving the entire galaxy from evil AI. Season 3 involved saving the Federation yet again (this time, in the far future), while Season 4 was all about stopping a threat that destroyed entire planets. The final season wrapped things up with a plot about keeping reality-rewriting technology from ending up in the hands of the scariest aliens the galaxy has ever known.
Star Trek Fans Experience Disaster Fatigue
Star Trek: Picard continued this tradition: Season 1 turned Picard’s quest to help Data’s daughter into an adventure involving an ancient Romulan conspiracy, android rebellion, and all-powerful machine gods from outside the galaxy. Season 2 had Picard and his buddies fighting to keep their entire future from becoming a freaky fascist dystopia. Oh, and Season 3 wrapped things up by having our heroes prevent the Borg from taking over and rewriting the entire galaxy into their cybernetic image.
Understandably, audiences grew tired of what amounted to disaster fatigue; as with superhero movies, the simple truth is that it’s just exhausting when the stakes are always impossibly high. It’s hard to care that the entire galaxy is in danger when this is happening in literally every season. Strange New Worlds tried to fix this problem with simpler, episodic adventures, but some fans thought the adventures were too low-stakes, and it was hard to care about stories with plots like “will everyone stop singing?” and “will Spock fulfill his naughty nurse fantasy?”
Star Trek’s Drama Loses Its Shirt
When Starfleet Academy began, it arguably replicated the problem of Star Trek’s low-stakes stories. It’s a show modeled after Young Adult franchises like Harry Potter, so the episodes mostly revolve around the young cadets discovering the power and value that has been hidden inside of them all along. That makes for some interesting coming-of-age stories, but some fans found story hooks like “will Starfleet Academy win the prank war?” and “will SAM stop arguing with her holographic parents?” so low-stakes that they couldn’t really care about these episodes.
That’s part of why I was so impressed by “Come, Let’s Away:” the most recent Starfleet Academy episode effectively found a narrative sweet spot by giving us an adventure where our cadets were in mortal peril. After a training mission goes sideways, several cadets are kidnapped by killer cannibals, forcing Starfleet to ask space pirate Nus Braka for help. While the cadets are ultimately saved, Braka doublecrosses our heroes, destroying a starship and ransacking a starbase while leaving a trail of bodies in the cold vacuum of space.
How Star Trek Got Its Groove Back
I personally loved this episode for many reasons, including the fact that it ditched the show’s signature bad humor to deliver a tense thriller reminiscent of the Golden Age of Trek. Seeing the characters cut the jokes and pool their different skills to overcome an impossible situation reminded me of why I fell in love with shows like The Next Generation. Eventually, I realized the other big reason this episode reminded me of TNG: it finally found the sweet spot between insanely high stakes and laughably low stakes.
The cadets being in mortal peril is certainly higher-stakes than, say, stories focusing entirely on Caleb’s love life or prank battles with the War College. But it’s not like Discovery or Picard, where the crew regularly had to save the entire galaxy from some insane threat or another. Instead, Starfleet Academy finally found that sweet spot by giving us the ultimate Trek trope of a story: a simple mission goes wrong, and everyone must put their training to the test to overcome impossible odds.
Only time will tell if Starfleet Academy can maintain this sweet spot for future episodes or if we will go back to low-stakes adventures punctuated by cringeworthy potty humor. But as I mentioned in my review of “Come, Let’s Away,” my fingers are crossed that this represents a turning point for this controversial show and that it is becoming the kind of series older franchise fans have been begging for. With any luck, the writers realize they are dealing with their own high-stakes story about whether Star Trek survives another 60 years or gets a Dr. McCoy-like assessment from a bored fandom: “it’s dead, Jim!”
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