What to Stream This Month

Find our previous streaming recommendations here.

Do you ever wish you could binge-watch your favorite PBS programs? If you’re a member you already can; if not, it’s easy to join. With WTTW Passport, members can watch a huge library of PBS and WTTW programming on-demand on any streaming device. To learn more about WTTW Passport, check out our dedicated site. You can activate or sign up for Passport here.

Each month we’ll bring you a few Passport picks. March is Women’s History Month, so we’re spotlighting some incredible women, ranging from the everyday to the famous, the unfairly unknown to the household name, the fictional to the real.

American Masters

American Masters has profiled some extraordinary women; while we’ve only selected a few this month, it’s worth checking out the others, too. You know Louisa May Alcott, the hardworking author of Little Women, but you might not know about some of her other path-breaking books. Althea Gibson and Eva Hesse may be less familiar, but they’re definitely worth learning about. Gibson broke the double boundaries of race and gender to become the first African American (of any gender) to play and win at Wimbledon and the precursor to the U.S. Open. Hesse managed to forge an acclaimed career in the male-dominated world of New York’s art scene in the 1960s before dying an untimely death.

Prime Suspect Tennison

You might remember the Prime Suspect series of the 1990s and 2000s that starred Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison, a glass ceiling-breaking detective in London constantly forced to negotiate the sexist police department while also solving crimes and rising through the ranks. Prime Suspect Tennison is a prequel, set in the 1970s, that follows Tennison as a young police officer new to the force and its often misogynistic culture.

Independent Lens: Dolores

While her fellow activist Cesar Chavez received much more attention in coverage of the fight for farmworkers’ labor rights in California in the 1960s, Huerta was just as important. A tireless labor and civil rights activist on behalf of workers, Latino workers, and women, she is the originator of the rallying cry “Sí, se puede.” Explore her indomitable life and career in this Independent Lens documentary.

POV

A Hasidic community might seem an unlikely place for feminist trailblazers, but 93Queen follows a group of Brooklyn Hasidic women determined to form the city’s first all-female volunteer EMS corps. The War to Be Her looks at another unlikely community for female pioneers: a Taliban-controlled area of Pakistan. Despite restrictions on women, Maria Toorpakai wants to become a star athlete, and disguises herself as a boy to play squash. As she finds success, her identity is revealed, exposing her and her family to danger.