Fnuz: finding movies and shows of the 2000s, from Finding Nemo, Ratatouille and The Social Network to Friends, The Office and The Big Bang Theory, and where to watch them

How Fnuz works

Everything begins with the search field. It accepts the title of a movie or a show, the name of a performer or a director, or a year, and it starts to answer while you type. Enter Ratatouille and the film is there. Enter Steve Carell and you receive his office comedy. Enter 2007 and the twelve movies of that year appear together with the shows that began then. For a show you can go further and add a season and an episode number, and the result will take you straight to that episode.

If you would sooner browse, the grey bar at the top holds the main buttons: Home, Movies, Shows, Comedy, Family, Sitcoms, Top rated, the A-Z index and My List. A button turns lime green under the pointer and stays green on the page you are viewing. On a phone the bar folds into a single menu button.

A title page is laid out the same way for a movie or a show. At the top are the poster, the title, the year, the rating out of ten and the genres. A summary follows in a few sentences, then the director or creators and the leading cast, each name a link to that person's other titles on Fnuz. A show page continues with every season and every episode, each with its title and original air date. Beside the lime Watch now button is a menu of fifteen countries; choose yours, press, and JustWatch opens with the subscription, rental, purchase and free services that carry the title there. Fnuz does the finding, and the services do the playing.

Two more tools are worth knowing. The A-Z page is a full alphabetical index of all 171 titles, and the page on finding titles describes every route through the site. My List is a personal shortlist that lives in your own browser on your own device; press the list button on any page to add a title, and visit the My List page to learn how to save a copy.

The four top ten lists

The lists on the home page are the signature of Fnuz, and they are made from simple arithmetic. Top 10 movies ranks the films by the number of votes they have received from viewers around the world, a fair measure of how many people have seen and remembered them. At present it reads: Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Social Network, The Terminal, Little Miss Sunshine, Hugo, Hachi: A Dog's Tale, Mamma Mia! and Hitch. Two animated features, a fantasy, three dramas, two comedies, a musical and a story about a dog: it is a good summary of what the decade's audiences loved.

Top 10 shows is ranked the same way and is led by The Big Bang Theory, followed by Friends, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, Modern Family, Community, Drake & Josh, Victorious, The IT Crowd and That '70s Show. Every one is a comedy, which tells its own story about what people return to.

The two best rated lists use the average score instead of the number of votes. Among movies, Flipped and Hachi: A Dog's Tale share first place at 8.0, followed at 7.8 by Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, Before Sunset and Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, and at 7.7 by Little Miss Sunshine and The World's Fastest Indian. Among shows, The Office leads at 8.6, with Friends and Drake & Josh at 8.4 and The West Wing at 8.3. The Top rated category gathers all thirty-seven titles, movies and shows together, that hold 7.5 or higher. The page on the top ten lists explains the method in a few lines.

The movies: 2003 to 2011

The 118 movies cover nine years, and they were eventful years for the cinema. Computer animation came of age. The DVD reached its peak and the first films arrived on demand. Three-dimensional projection returned. Through all of it, studios kept making the comedies, romances and family adventures that fill most of this catalogue, and the best of them have lasted well.

The two most popular titles on Fnuz are animated features from the same studio. Finding Nemo, released in 2003, follows a timid clownfish across the ocean in search of his son, who has been scooped from the reef and placed in a fish tank in Sydney. The water itself was a technical marvel at the time, and the story, about a parent learning to let a child take risks, is as affecting as ever. Ratatouille, from 2007, is set in the kitchens of Paris, where a rat with a gifted nose secretly guides a clumsy young cook to greatness. Its final sequence, in which a stern critic tastes a humble dish and is carried back to his childhood, is among the finest scenes in any animated film. Both are rated 7.8.

The Social Network, from 2010, is the defining drama of the period, and fittingly it is about the birth of a website. Jesse Eisenberg plays a brilliant, prickly student whose idea grows from a dormitory project into a company worth billions while his friendships fall away. Its companion in spirit is Moneyball, from the following year, in which a baseball manager played by Brad Pitt rebuilds his team with the help of a laptop and a young economist. Both films find drama in people sitting at keyboards, which was a new thing for Hollywood to attempt.

The Terminal is Steven Spielberg's gentle comedy about a traveller from a small country who is stranded in a New York airport by a change of government at home and proceeds to make a life in the departure lounge. Tom Hanks is at his most winning. Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese, hides an orphan inside the clocks of a Paris railway station and leads him to one of the founders of cinema. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory gave Roald Dahl's story to Tim Burton, with Johnny Depp as the eccentric chocolate maker. The movies guide picks out more.

Comedy movies

Seventy-six of the movies are comedies, and the range is wide. Little Miss Sunshine is the critics' favourite: a family of six lovable strugglers drives a yellow minibus eight hundred miles so that the youngest, seven-year-old Olive, can enter a children's beauty pageant. It is rated 7.7, and its last ten minutes are pure happiness. The film uses some frank language and suits older viewers.

Elf, from 2003, has become the seasonal comedy of its generation. Will Ferrell plays a man raised among Santa's helpers who travels to New York to meet his father and brings a child's delight to a city that has forgotten how. 17 Again gives a disappointed father a second run at high school, this time alongside his own children. Mr. Bean's Holiday sends Rowan Atkinson's nearly wordless hero across France by train, bicycle and borrowed car to the film festival at Cannes.

The workplace supplied good material in these years. Morning Glory stars Rachel McAdams as a determined young producer handed a struggling breakfast programme and a legendary newsman, played by Harrison Ford, who considers it beneath him. In Good Company pairs a seasoned advertising salesman with the twenty-six-year-old who becomes his boss. The Nanny Diaries follows a graduate into the household of a wealthy Manhattan family, and Employee of the Month sets two shop workers competing for a title.

Families on the move are a favourite of the decade: RV, with Robin Williams at the wheel of a rented motorhome, Are We Done Yet?, about a house that needs more repairs than its buyers imagined, and Cheaper by the Dozen, whose twelve children outnumber every plan their parents make. The comedy guide lists further choices.

Family movies

Forty-eight movies are suitable for the whole household, and animals star in many of them. Hachi: A Dog's Tale shares the highest rating among the movies. Based on a true story from Japan and moved to a small American town, it tells of a professor, played by Richard Gere, who finds a lost puppy at the railway station, and of the dog's lifelong habit of waiting there for him each evening. Have a handkerchief ready. Marley & Me is the cheerful opposite for most of its length, the story of a young couple and a Labrador with boundless energy and little sense. Charlotte's Web brings a classic children's book to the screen with a real piglet and a gently spoken spider, and Dolphin Tale and Racing Stripes add a rescued dolphin and a zebra who believes he is a racehorse.

Children's books were a rich source. Besides the chocolate factory and the Paris station, the catalogue has Diary of a Wimpy Kid and its first sequel, drawn from hugely popular illustrated diaries of middle-school life; Inkheart, about a man whose reading aloud brings characters out of their pages; The Golden Compass; and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Ramona and Beezus is a warm adaptation of the stories about an imaginative nine-year-old and her patient older sister.

Many family films of the period were built around a comedian in an unlikely job. Eddie Murphy opens a nursery in Daddy Day Care. Dwayne Johnson plays a football star who discovers he has a daughter in The Game Plan and an ice hockey player sentenced to duty with wings in Tooth Fairy. Jim Carrey inherits six birds from the Antarctic in Mr. Popper's Penguins. They are light, bright and reliably good-natured. The family guide sorts the category by age.

Romance movies

Fifty love stories make romance the third largest group of movies. Before Sunset, rated 7.8, is the most admired. Nine years after a single night together in Vienna, an American writer and a French environmentalist meet again in a Paris bookshop with little more than an hour before his plane leaves. The film unfolds in real time as they walk and talk through the afternoon streets, and its closing line is famous among film lovers.

The Holiday is the comfort film of the category. Two women, one in an English village and one in a Los Angeles mansion, exchange houses over the winter break to escape disappointing men, and each finds better company than she expected. One Day checks in on the same pair of friends every fifteenth of July for twenty years. Up in the Air follows a consultant who lives out of a suitcase and is proud of it, until a younger colleague and a fellow traveller make him reconsider.

The decade loved a wedding. 27 Dresses stars Katherine Heigl as a woman who has been a bridesmaid twenty-seven times, Bride Wars turns best friends into rivals, The Wedding Date hires a companion for a sister's ceremony in London, and Four Christmases sends a couple to four family gatherings in one day. Music and Lyrics pairs Hugh Grant, as a pop star of the 1980s, with Drew Barrymore as the woman watering his plants who turns out to have a gift for words.

The youngest lovers have the highest rating. Flipped, set in the early 1960s, tells the same story twice, first as the boy saw it and then as the girl did, from the day she fell for him at seven to the day he finally understood her at thirteen. Little Manhattan is narrated by a ten-year-old New Yorker in the grip of his first crush. The romance guide has the full list.

Drama movies and true stories

Fifty-nine movies carry the drama label, and the strongest of them are drawn from life. Ray follows the singer and pianist Ray Charles from a poor childhood in Florida to the top of the charts, with a performance by Jamie Foxx that won the Academy Award. Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, rated 7.8, is the story of a boy from Detroit who struggled at school and became a pioneering surgeon. The World's Fastest Indian stars Anthony Hopkins as an elderly New Zealander who takes his home-tuned motorcycle to the salt flats of Utah to chase a speed record, and is rated 7.7.

Sport provided a whole shelf of true stories in these years: Miracle, about the American ice hockey team of 1980; Invincible, about a barman who won a place with a professional football club at an open trial; Glory Road, about a college basketball coach who changed the game in 1966; We Are Marshall; Seabiscuit; and from England The Damned United, a sharp and funny portrait of a famous football manager. The true stories guide gathers them.

Other dramas are simply good stories well told. August Rush is a modern fairy tale about a boy who believes that music will lead him to his parents. The Soloist follows a newspaper columnist and a gifted cellist living on the streets of Los Angeles. Secondhand Lions sends a shy boy to spend a summer with two eccentric great-uncles, and The Young Victoria dramatises the early reign and the marriage of a young queen. Julie & Julia moves between a famous cook in 1950s Paris and a blogger in 2002 New York who works through her recipes. The drama guide lists them all.

Princes, princesses and the school corridor

If one kind of film marks out the middle of the decade, it is the modern fairy tale for teenagers, and Fnuz has a full set. A Cinderella Story moves the tale to a Californian high school, with a lost mobile phone in place of a glass slipper. It was popular enough to inspire Another Cinderella Story, built around a dance contest and rated 7.3, and A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song. In The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, Anne Hathaway's reluctant royal must marry within a month to keep her crown and decides the law is what needs changing.

Real and invented royalty was in fashion. The Prince & Me sends the heir to the Danish throne to an American university in disguise, where a farm girl studying medicine teaches him to do his own laundry. What a Girl Wants takes a free-spirited New Yorker to London in search of the aristocratic father she has yet to meet, played by Colin Firth. First Daughter imagines life at college for the child of an American president, and Monte Carlo lets three friends from Texas borrow the life of an heiress for a week.

Friendship is the real subject of the best of these films. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants follows four friends through their first summer apart, connected by a pair of jeans that somehow suits each of them, and its sequel finds them at the end of their first year of university. Ice Princess is about a gifted physics student who discovers she would sooner skate than study, Whip It about a small-town girl who finds her tribe in a roller derby league, and Starstruck about a sensible teenager who literally bumps into a pop idol.

Adventure and fantasy movies

Twenty-two movies promise a journey. The decade's taste for epic fantasy is represented by The Golden Compass, set in a world where every person is accompanied by an animal companion, and by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third visit to that kingdom, this time by sea. Journey to the Center of the Earth was one of the first live-action features of the new age of three-dimensional cinema, and sends a scientist, his nephew and their guide down an Icelandic volcano into a lost world.

Lighter adventures are close at hand. Gulliver's Travels washes a mailroom clerk ashore on an island of very small people. The Librarian: Quest for the Spear introduces a perpetual student who becomes the guardian of a secret collection of legendary objects. The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl grew from stories told by the director's young son, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties takes the lazy cat to an English castle, and Inkheart remains a treat for anyone who loves books. In Hugo, the adventure is the discovery of early cinema itself.

Second acts and new starts

A good many of the comedies and dramas are about adults starting again, a theme that seems to have suited the times. Larry Crowne, directed by and starring Tom Hanks, follows a store manager who loses his job, enrols at a community college and buys a scooter. The Company Men tells a more sober version of the same story through three executives at a shipbuilding firm. We Bought a Zoo has a widowed journalist move his children to a run-down wildlife park, and Jersey Girl a publicist who leaves Manhattan to raise his daughter in the town where he grew up.

New families are formed in unusual ways. Life As We Know It hands a baby to two godparents who can barely stand each other. Guess Who introduces a nervous fiancé to a protective father, You Again reunites old school rivals as future in-laws, and Because I Said So stars Diane Keaton as a mother who loves to arrange her youngest daughter's life. Failure to Launch, Just Friends, When in Rome and How Do You Know are easygoing romantic comedies about people who took the long way round to growing up.

Two romances have more weight. Water for Elephants looks back from old age on a summer with a travelling circus in 1931, and Like Crazy follows a British student and her American boyfriend through the strain of a long-distance relationship. Both are for evenings when something more than a comedy is wanted.

Movies for the holidays

The 2000s produced a generous number of seasonal comedies, and eight of them are here for December. Elf leads, of course. The Holiday and The Family Stone, in which a tightly wound New Yorker meets her boyfriend's relaxed and outspoken family, supply romance and tears. Four Christmases crowds four difficult visits into one day, and Christmas with the Kranks follows a couple who try to skip the celebrations and find their neighbours have other plans.

For younger viewers there are Fred Claus, about the less saintly older brother of a very famous man, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, in which a rival tries to take over the North Pole, and Deck the Halls, a contest between neighbours over the brightest house in town. Type holiday or Christmas into the search field in any month and the list appears.

Movies from across the Atlantic

Most of the catalogue is American, but a British corner adds variety. Goal! and Goal II: Living the Dream follow a young footballer from Los Angeles to a club in the north of England and then to Madrid, with real players and real stadiums in the background. The Damned United and Wimbledon take two very different views of English sport, one wry and one romantic. The Young Victoria, One Day and The Wedding Date make good use of London, Edinburgh and the countryside, and Mr. Bean's Holiday needs hardly a word of any language. From New Zealand comes the hero of The World's Fastest Indian, and from Ireland the director of August Rush.

Short runs and long runs

The show pages tell you at a glance how much there is to watch, and the answer varies enormously. The shortest are the British serials: David Copperfield in two parts, North & South, Jane Eyre and Lost in Austen in four each, Pride and Prejudice in six and Cranford in seven. A weekend is enough for any of them. Freaks and Geeks has eighteen episodes, The IT Crowd twenty-four and Better Off Ted twenty-six, a comfortable fortnight.

At the other end stand the giants of American network television. The Big Bang Theory has 279 episodes, Modern Family 250, Friends 228, McLeod's Daughters 224, The Middle 215 and Everybody Loves Raymond 210. Watched at one episode an evening, any of them would last most of a year. Knowing the length before you begin helps to match a show to the time you have, and the search field will take you to any single episode if you only want to revisit a favourite.

Getting more from the search box

Since search is the heart of Fnuz, a few habits make it more useful. Short queries work best: a single surname, a single word from a title, a year. Typing wedding brings up every film with the word in its name; typing dog or zoo or penguins finds the animal stories; typing diary finds both a wimpy kid and a nanny. Because the catalogue knows the cast of every title, a search for a supporting actor is often the quickest way to a film whose name has slipped your mind. If you remember that Stanley Tucci played a kindly airport official, his name will lead you to The Terminal and to Julie & Julia as well.

Years are a help when memory is vague. Enter 2004 and thirteen movies appear, which is a short enough list to scan. For shows, the search understands the usual shorthand for seasons and episodes, so a title followed by a season number and an episode number lands on the exact page, complete with its air date and its place in the series. And when a search turns up several good answers, My List is the place to keep the ones you will come back to.

The top ten lists are useful as a starting point for search too. Each entry is a link, and the page behind it lists the cast; one more press on a name widens the trail. Starting from The Holiday, for example, the name of Jack Black leads to Gulliver's Travels and that of Jude Law to Hugo, where he plays the clockmaker father in the opening scenes. From there the name of Ben Kingsley or Sacha Baron Cohen opens further paths. Ten minutes of following names in this way will teach you a great deal about how small and friendly the film world of the period really was, and will usually end with two or three new titles on My List.

Why these titles have lasted

Fifteen or twenty years is a fair test of a film or a series. Fashions in clothes and telephones have dated, and that is part of the charm, but the stories on Fnuz still work because they were built on durable things: a parent and a child, a group of friends, a first love, a team that learns to play together. The comedies in particular were written by rooms of professionals who polished every scene until it earned its laugh, and the family films were made by studios at the height of their confidence in that kind of entertainment.

They have also gained something with time. A viewer who saw Finding Nemo as a child may now be showing it to a child of their own, and will notice for the first time that it is really the father's story. The friends of Friends look younger every year. A catalogue like this one is partly a family album, and searching it is a pleasant way of remembering where you were when you first met these characters.

Music and dance

The 2000s rediscovered the musical, on television first and then in the cinema. High School Musical began as a television film in 2006 and became a phenomenon; its two sequels are here too, the third made for cinemas. Camp Rock and Lemonade Mouth, about a group of students who meet in detention and form a band, followed in the same spirit, the latter rated 7.4. Mamma Mia! took a stage hit built on the songs of a Swedish pop group to a Greek island with Meryl Streep and became one of the most successful musicals ever filmed.

Dance had its own run. Step Up 3D sets rival crews against each other in New York, Take the Lead stars Antonio Banderas as a ballroom teacher who volunteers at a city high school, and the 2011 version of Footloose brings a newcomer to a town where public dancing is banned. On the small screen, Hannah Montana and Victorious made pop performance part of the weekly story. The music and dance guide links them all.

The shows

The fifty-three shows on Fnuz were all on the air at some point between 2003 and 2011, though several began earlier and a few ran on long afterwards. Together they amount to 256 seasons and 5,099 episodes, enough to last a household for years.

The decade was the last great age of the comedy filmed before a studio audience, and its champions are here. Friends finished its ten-year run in 2004 with one of the most watched final episodes in history. How I Met Your Mother picked up the idea of a group of friends in New York the following year and added a clever frame, a father in the future telling his children the story. The Big Bang Theory, which began in 2007, became the most watched comedy in the world over twelve seasons and 279 episodes.

At the same time a new style arrived, with a single camera and a quieter kind of joke. The Office presented itself as a documentary about a paper company and holds the highest rating on Fnuz at 8.6. Modern Family used the same device for three related households, Scrubs dived in and out of a young doctor's imagination, and Community turned a study group into a playground for every film and television style its writers loved. Better Off Ted and The Middle belong to the same wave. The shows guide offers a first choice from each kind.

Sitcoms in detail

Thirty-nine of the shows are comedies, and they fall into three families. The first is about friends and colleagues, and has been described above. The second is about households. Everybody Loves Raymond puts a sportswriter's parents across the street. According to Jim, Still Standing, Reba, 8 Simple Rules and Last Man Standing each centre on parents doing their best with strong-willed children, and That '70s Show looks back at the same battles from a teenager's side of the basement door. Gilmore Girls, half comedy and half drama, follows a mother and daughter who are also best friends.

The third family was made for younger viewers and was hugely popular in these years. Drake & Josh, rated 8.4, pairs two stepbrothers with little in common. iCarly imagined teenagers producing their own online show before most households had tried it. The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, That's So Raven, Lizzie McGuire, Good Luck Charlie, Austin & Ally, A.N.T. Farm and Zeke and Luther filled the hours after school for a generation.

Britain contributes three comedies of a different flavour. The IT Crowd is set in the basement office of a London corporation, where two technicians and their manager, who knows little about computers, keep the building running; it is rated 8.2. Miranda stars a comedian who talks to the camera about her own awkwardness, and Outnumbered is a family comedy in which the children's lines were largely improvised. The sitcoms guide lists all thirty-nine.

Drama, period and adventure shows

Twenty-seven shows offer something other than laughter, or as well as it. The West Wing, rated 8.3, follows the staff of an American president through seven seasons of crises and corridors. Friday Night Lights is set in a Texas town devoted to its high school football team and is really about a marriage, a community and the young people growing up in it. Hart of Dixie sends a city doctor to a small Southern practice, and the Australian series McLeod's Daughters follows the women who run a cattle station.

The period drama flourished on British television in these years. Bleak House, from 2005, tells the novel by Charles Dickens in brisk half-hour episodes. Jane Eyre, Cranford and North & South followed, the last a four-part love story set among the cotton mills of northern England and rated 8.1. Downton Abbey arrived in 2010 and became a worldwide success. The earlier Pride and Prejudice of 1995, in six episodes, is also here, as is Lost in Austen, in which a modern reader swaps places with its heroine.

For adventure there are Merlin, a retelling of the legend with the wizard as a young servant at Camelot; Eureka, about a town full of scientists; Warehouse 13, about agents who collect dangerous curiosities; and Kyle XY and H2O: Just Add Water for younger viewers. From the Earth to the Moon recounts the Apollo missions in twelve episodes, and Freaks and Geeks, which ran for a single season, is now counted among the best series about school ever made. The guide to drama and adventure shows has the full list.

Nine years of movies

Taken year by year, the movies show how tastes shifted. The first three years, 2003 to 2005, contribute thirty-eight films. They include Finding Nemo, Elf, Seabiscuit and Cheaper by the Dozen from 2003; The Terminal, Before Sunset, Ray and Miracle from 2004; and Hitch, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The World's Fastest Indian from 2005. Romantic comedy was at its height, and films about teenage princesses and modern Cinderellas, such as A Cinderella Story and The Prince & Me, were everywhere.

The middle years, 2006 to 2008, add thirty-six. This was the period of Little Miss Sunshine, The Holiday and Charlotte's Web, of Ratatouille and August Rush, and of Mamma Mia! and Marley & Me. The musical made its comeback, and stories about sport drawn from real events appeared almost every season.

The last three years, 2009 to 2011, are the fullest with forty-four films, eighteen of them from 2010 alone. Hachi: A Dog's Tale, Up in the Air and Julie & Julia date from 2009; The Social Network, Flipped and Diary of a Wimpy Kid from 2010; and Hugo, Moneyball, One Day and We Bought a Zoo from 2011. Films grew a little more thoughtful as the decade closed, and several of its best dramas came at the very end. The year by year guide links to each period.

Familiar names

Search any performer on Fnuz and you may be surprised how often they appear. Zac Efron is in all three films of High School Musical and in 17 Again. Hilary Duff leads A Cinderella Story, The Lizzie McGuire Movie and The Perfect Man and appears in the show that made her name. Dwayne Johnson, Steve Martin, Amy Adams, Jennifer Garner and Reese Witherspoon each have several entries, and Julia Roberts is in Eat Pray Love, Valentine's Day and Larry Crowne.

On the television side, a search for Miranda Cosgrove brings up both Drake & Josh and iCarly, and one for Steve Carell, Jason Segel or Neil Patrick Harris shows how the comedy stars of the small screen moved into films during these same years. The directors include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Tim Burton and Richard Linklater, each with one film, and the specialists in light comedy who made two or three apiece. Every name on a title page is a link, so one search often leads to an evening's worth of discoveries.

Watching in the 2000s, and now

It is worth remembering how these titles were first seen. In 2003 most households rented or bought discs, and a new comedy on television had to be caught on the night or recorded. By 2011, video sites were part of daily life, the first subscription services were sending films over the internet, and a telephone could play an episode on the train. The shows of the period were the first to be watched in long sittings, several episodes at a time, and writers began to plan their stories with that in mind.

That history explains why this catalogue travels so well to the present. The movies were made to be enjoyed at home on a modest screen, with clear stories and warm colours. The shows were made in generous quantity, twenty or more episodes a year, which means there is always another one waiting. And nearly all of them are now offered by official services in most countries, which is what the Watch now button is for.

A sensible way to use Fnuz is the way people used search engines at the time: come with a half-formed wish and let the lists do the rest. If the household wants something for all ages, open Family and pick from the first row. If someone remembers a film about a dog at a railway station, type dog and it will be found. If the evening calls for a few easy laughs, choose any show from the top ten and start at the first season. Add whatever catches the eye to My List, and the next evening is already planned.

Movies and shows that go together

Because Fnuz holds both films and series, it suggests pairings across the two. Viewers who enjoy the corridors of The West Wing will find the same quick intelligence in The Social Network, written by the same hand. Those who like the gentle optimism of Gilmore Girls might follow it with The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, whose cast includes one of its stars. Friday Night Lights sits naturally beside the football films Invincible and We Are Marshall.

Younger viewers can go from Hannah Montana to Camp Rock and Starstruck, or from Lizzie McGuire to her film. Admirers of Downton Abbey and Cranford will be at home with The Young Victoria, and anyone who laughs at The IT Crowd should try Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, a small British comedy with one of the same actors. A movie makes a pleasant change in the middle of a long series, and the search box is the quickest way from one to the other.

A title page in detail

Take Up in the Air as an example. Its page shows the poster of three travellers at an airport window, the year 2009, a running time of 110 minutes and a rating of 6.9. The summary explains that Ryan Bingham spends more than three hundred days a year on the road for his work and is close to a personal goal of ten million air miles when his company decides to keep its staff at home. Jason Reitman is credited as director; George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick lead the cast, and each name opens that performer's other titles on Fnuz. Set the country menu, press the lime Watch now button, and the services offering the film where you live are listed with their prices.

Questions and answers

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