More than 2,600 episodes of CBS programming, which typically streams only on CBS.com, will start appearing on Hulu in 2013.
Hulu Plus users — who pay $7.99 each month for Hulu’s subscription service — will have access to the library of new and old shows such as CSI: Miami Medium, Numb3rs, Star Trek, I Love Lucy and The Twilight Zone beginning in January.
Some of CBS’s library, including Entertainment Tonight, will also be available for non-paying Hulu users.
| Martha Stewart Expands Digital Video Push to Hulu
“This collection of CBS titles are shows that people revere and that really matter to fans of great TV like our subscribers,” Hulu’s SVP of content Andy Forssell said in a statement announcing the non-exclusive multi-year content deal with CBS Corporation on Monday.
BONUS: 11 Sci-Fi Shows You Can Watch Right Now
11 Sci-Fi Shows You Can Watch Right Now
1. Alphas
We’ll kick things off with one of our top picks, which just began its second season: Alphas.
Currently airing on Syfy, Alphas centers on a group of seemingly normal people who actually possess superpowers, called Alpha abilities, such as incredibly heightened senses, unbelievable strength and the ability to see communications signals as streams of data.
Along with their psychologist and mentor, Dr. Rosen, they’re employed the the U.S. government as part of a secret program to track down other so-called Alphas who aren’t so law-abiding. What starts out as a fairly by-the-books superhero tale quickly becomes an intriguing mix of secret agendas, questionable loyalties, and some pretty surprising twists that’ll have you wondering who the bad guys really are.
Watch on Hulu, Amazon or iTunes
2. Doctor Who
This classic sci-fi series hails from the UK and has been around since the the early 1960s. After taking a break in 1989, it returned to the airwaves in 2005 and has been thrilling fans in its current form ever since.
Doctor Who follows the last Time Lord, who travels through time and space with his sassy sidekick and trusty sonic screwdriver, encountering all manner of robots, aliens and inter-dimensional adventure. It’s clever, sometimes quite funny, and occasionally very creepy. More than anything, it’s a true TV classic that’s required viewing to earn your sci-fi fan credentials.
Watch on Netflix, Amazon or iTunes
3. Falling Skies
Executive producer Steven Spielberg is behind Falling Skies, a tale of alien invasion that’s actually set after the otherworldly overlords have decimated most of the human race, leaving only a few pockets of resistance struggling to fight back. The series focuses on one of these groups in particular, a mixture of civilians and military from Massachusetts.
Like the late, great Battlestar Galactica, the show, along with ER alumni Noah Wyle as one of the group’s leaders, plays off of the human drama that unfolds among the survivors rather than massive special effects-laden battle sequences (though, like Galactica, it’ll probably have its share of those).
4. Fringe
This spiritual successor to The X-Files follows a government agent, a mad scientist and his son as they team up to solve highly strange cases that usually have explanations in some truly weird science. Without giving too much away, some of the cases begin to follow a particular pattern, which leads the team to some startling discoveries about the nature of reality itself.
Not only should X-Files fans enjoy Fringe, but its many mysteries — along with the involvement of J. J. Abrams — should totally ensnare anyone who loved his most famous creation, Lost.
Watch: on Hulu, Amazon or iTunes
5. Futurama
Simpsons creator Matt Groening is behind this hilarious series that follows the misadventures of an intergalactic delivery company called Planet Express. Its central character, Philip J. Fry, is a regular pizza-eating, beer-drinking everyman from the 20th century who gets cryogenically frozen and wakes up in the 31st century.
There, he find himself in one crazy situation after another, along with his decrepit (extremely) great nephew Professor Farnsworth, a headstrong cyclops named Leela, an alcoholic robot named Bender, and a whole host of other oddballs. They’ve got more than 130 episodes under their belts, and we’d be hard-pressed to find a single one we didn’t like.
Watch on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or iTunes
6. Misfits
First aired in the UK in 2009, Misfits is a darkly humorous series about a group of miscreant teens who, while assigned to a community service detail, are zapped by a lightning storm and develop superpowers. To say much more would get into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that there are a lot of laughs and some real drama. Learning what the kids’ powers are and seeing how they deal with them makes for some really compelling TV.
Watch on Hulu, Amazon or iTunes
7. Primeval
Another British creation, Primeval is about time travel and dinosaurs — but don’t worry, it’s much better than the now-canceled Steven Spielberg series Terra Nova. Unlike that show, which has humans traveling to the past, the premise of this one is that rifts in time are allowing dinosaurs and other creatures to enter modern-day London and wreak havoc.
The human element of the show comes in the form of a team that’s assembled to deal with the wayward dinos and the anomalies that are enabling them to enter our timeline. If you can get past the dodgy special effects early on, you’re in for a dynamite (or is that dino-mite?) time traveling adventure.
Watch on Netflix, Amazon or iTunes
8. Star Wars: The Clone Wars
There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about what’s happening with George Lucas’ proposed live-action Star Wars series, but fans of the galaxy far, far away have been glued to this exceptional computer-animated saga for several seasons now.
Set between the second and third Star Wars prequels, it follows Jedi knights Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in their roles as generals in the Clone Wars. Their adventures take them across countless worlds, fighting alongside the clone army of the Republic in battles against the Separatists, clashing with foes old and new.
The show provides a glimpse into never-before-seen parts of the Star Wars universe, and although it’s aimed at younger audiences, fans of all ages will no doubt be impressed by its storytelling.
Watch on iTunes
9. Torchwood
This spin-off of Doctor Who focuses on the Torchwood Institute, an organization that deals with tracking down and capturing alien lifeforms on Earth and securing their technology before it falls into the wrong hands. Its lead character is Captain Jack Harkness, a time traveler from the 51st century introduced (and eventually made famous) on Doctor Who.
Torchwood is a great example of a “monster of the week” format show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where its heroes have to take on a new threat in each episode while dealing with an overarching storyline that ties the series together. Harkness is probably one of our favorite new sci-fi characters of the past decade — and the rest of the cast isn’t so bad, either.
Watch on Netflix, Amazon or iTunes
10. Tron: Uprising
Based on the iconic 1982 film from Disney and its 2012 sequel, Tron: Uprising is an entirely computer-animated series (as opposed to the films, which featured real actors) set inside of a computer. Here, in a world called the Grid, a young program named Beck (voiced by Elijah Wood) trains to become the new Tron, a warrior and freedom fighter out to free the Grid from Clu, an oppressive digital copy of its human creator.
In addition to Wood, this series features the voice talents of Bruce Boxleitner, Lance Henrickson, and even Pee-Wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens. The impressive cast is one thing, but the stunning visuals and compelling story are what will keep sci-fi buffs of any age glued to their screens.
Watch on iTunes
11. Warehouse 13
We’re capping off our look at TV’s best sci-fi offerings with another series from Syfy, Warehouse 13. It centers around a secret warehouse in South Dakota where all sorts mystical (and mythological) artifacts are housed for safekeeping and a pair of Secret Service agents charged with seeking out strange items and bringing them in to be locked away. If you can picture the warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, you have an idea of what the place is.
It’s the interaction of its two lead characters with Artie, the warehouse’s custodian, that really gives this series a lot of heart. Of course, seeing what new and usually wild artifact the crew has to contend with every week is also a big draw. This show is actually set in the same universe as a recently ended Syfy series, Eureka, which would certainly have made our list if it were still on the air.
Watch on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or iTunes
Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/11/05/cbs-episodes-hulu-january/
Thousands of CBS Episodes Heading to Hulu in January
