Streaming columnist NICK OVERALL says the sun never sets on ‘Star Wars’ in the lockdown streaming world… 

IT seems parents are reliving their childhood/teenage years and turning to the “classics” to impress the kids in this lockdown streaming world. 

As a result, more than four decades on, “Star Wars” is peaking yet again. 

Disney+, which crashed into the already crowded market in November, has wasted no time in taking advantage of the trend.

In this age of streaming though, no longer is the story of a galaxy far, far away what we knew it to be – the one I grew up obsessed with, those campy yet charismatic originals we all love as well as George Lucas’ later… efforts. 

Now with “The Rise of Skywalker” just added by Disney (and you might want to take notes because it’s kind of hard to keep track), the universe spans three eras and nine films in its “main timeline”. Then there are two animated series of back stories with, incredibly, upwards of 200 episodes. Add to that two major spin-off films, “Solo” and “Rogue One”, and the latter has another instalment currently in development. Get your head around a spin-off of a spin-off. 

This well-milked cash cow is further topped up by the flashy, live-action original series and space western “The Mandalorian”. Clocking in at a $15 million-an-episode budget, the blockbuster produced thanks to the bottomless wallet of the corporate mouse means it has now even dethroned Netflix phenomenon “Stranger Things” as the most in-demand television show in the world. 

“Mando” is a galaxy-hopping bounty hunter who must protect “Baby Yoda” (not really Yoda, but think a miniature version of the beloved alien character whose cuteness the internet went ballistic for). The series’ ability to present a new side of this seemingly endless run of “Star Wars” consumption is admittedly something special. 

It also isn’t the only thing being revisited on the platform. Disney dropping a modest $71 billion in 20th Century Fox means icons such as “The Simpsons” are not only available in their entirety, but also reinvented to cash in on a new generation and fans of old.

“Collections” compiles some of the best episodes across multiple seasons under one crack theme, putting them in a binge playlist. 

“The Simpsons Predicts” is a pearler. As the title clearly suggests, it’s jumping on the internet’s preoccupation with the way the show has made spot-on predictions about world events years in advance. Smart watches, Nobel prize winners and, depending on your viewpoint, perhaps most ominous of all, it’s apparent knowledge that Donald Trump would be president 17 years before it happened. Could Homer Simpson be a sleeper agent for the KGB?

Streaming has allowed companies to watch us just as much as we watch them. Not only do their HAL9000-like algorithms monitor the content we consume, but how long we do it and how we talk about it on the internet. Hence, the Nostradamus-like foresight and inevitable commercial success of the choices of Disney+.

Speaking of stalky AI, when you’ve finally Star Wars’d the kids into a bedtime stupor, “Westworld” is streaming on Foxtel Now, aiming to fill that “Game of Thrones” hole in your heart with all the HBO staples of nudity, violence and elaborate plot lines. 

It’s about a super company looking to monopolise entertainment by creating a completely digital world that people pay to immerse themselves in and endlessly live out all their wildest fantasies. 

Hold on, doesn’t that sound kind of familiar?