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Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020 | 2 a.m.
If you haven’t seen the television shows your friends are talking about, don’t feel badly: There’s now more scripted TV out there than you could watch in a lifetime, and it just keeps stacking up. Inspired by Netflix, nearly all the major media conglomerates have launched streaming services loaded with programming—some new, some old, some from television, some from theaters. If you want to navigate this new world of Dragon Mothers and Babies Yoda, you need to get a handle on who’s running these streaming services and what they’re offering.
How do I even get on?
All of these services require an exterior doohickey. These range from the dirt-cheap Chromecast plug-in ($35, or $69 for a 4K resolution version) to the Apple TV box ($149 for 32GB of download storage, $199 for 64GB). You can also use Amazon’s Fire TV stick, a Roku player or recent-generation PlayStations and Xboxes.
Is it worth keeping cable or satellite TV?
You might notice there are no sports streaming services listed here; that’s because sports is its own beast, with dozens of streaming options. If you have a good cable sports package, it might just be easier to keep it. And there’s a certain comfort in picking up a remote and just flipping through channels.
Which services should I get?
That’s up to you. If, say, Disney+ or CBS All Access doesn’t appeal to you between seasons of The Mandalorian and Picard, respectively, you might want to wait for those shows to finish their seasonal runs, subscribe for a month and binge-watch. You might want to keep the densely programmed Hulu and Netflix as year-round baseline services—at least, until they start losing content. You’ve got at least a year before that happens.
Amazon Prime Video
• Price: $8.99/month, or included with Amazon Prime membership ($119/year)
• Hits: Acclaimed original shows (Fleabag, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Bosch, Good Omens) and movies (The Aeronauts, The Report, Brittany Runs a Marathon). Smallish selection of movies and TV shows from other studios.
• Misses: Well, it’s Amazon. If you have (understandable) moral qualms with the way Jeff Bezos does business, you can punish him by sitting this one out.
• That’s weird: The monthly option is only slightly cheaper. A full Amazon Prime membership also includes free shipping, a music streaming service, photo storage and more.
Apple TV+
Price: $4.99/month
Hits: The Morning Show, Servant, For All Mankind. A reboot of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories anthology series is forthcoming.
Misses: See that list of shows above? That constitutes nearly a quarter of the AppleTV+ programming slate. No other service has launched with so little content.
That’s weird: There’s also a Peanuts animated special here, Snoopy in Space. Good grief.
CBS All Access
Price: $5.99/month
Hits: Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, The Good Fight, Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone reboot. Full seasons of CBS hits NCIS and Blue Bloods. A selection of on-demand movies.
Misses: Unless you dig Star Trek or procedural cop series, there’s not much here … though an upcoming miniseries of Stephen King’s The Stand looks promising.
That’s weird: Previous seasons of CBS’ biggest hit, The Big Bang Theory, will stream on HBO Max. All Access has the current season only.
Disney+
Price: $6.99/month, or $12.99/month bundled with ESPN+ and ad-supported Hulu
Hits: The Mandalorian, Marvel’s Falcon & Winter Soldier, Marvel’s WandaVision. Permanent home to all the Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic content.
Misses: You’ll need to wait until fall for another hit of Baby Yoda. Marvel’s programming won’t debut until later this year; additional Star Wars series won’t fly in until next year.
That’s weird: Existing, unbreakable licensing deals mean some movies might drop off the service and return to Netflix and Amazon, albeit temporarily.
So, where can I binge ... ?
Want to watch the entire run of a series? It might not be streaming where you think it is.
American Horror Story? Hulu
The Big Bang Theory? HBO Max (in May)
Friends? Netflix (moving to HBO Max in May)
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Hulu
Law and Order? Peacock (in July)
NCIS? CBS All Access
The Office (U.S.): Netflix (moving to Peacock in January)
Rick and Morty? Hulu (moving to HBO Max in May)
Saturday Night Live? Peacock (in July)
The Simpsons? Disney+
HBO Max (launches in May)
Price: $14.99/month
Hits: Westworld, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, the Game of Thrones franchise.
Misses: Few and far between. HBO remains the gold standard in boutique programming.
That’s weird: If you’re a current HBO Now subscriber, you’ll be grandfathered into this new service—unless you’re joined up as an add-on through Hulu. Cable/satellite HBO subscribers, please note: AT&T is the only broadcast provider that has promised access to HBO Max, so far.
Hulu
Price: $5.99/month (with ads), or $11.99/month (no ads)
Hits: The Handmaid’s Tale, Castle Rock, PEN15, Letterkenny. Shows from ABC, Fox, FX, ESPN, AMC, TBS, Cartoon Network and more. Basically, everyone but CBS.
Misses: They might start losing shows as other streaming services get their legs under them.
That’s weird: Disney became majority owner of this service by buying the former 20th Century Fox. We’d make a Borg analogy, but all the Star Trek stuff belongs to CBS.
Netflix
Price: $8.99 (Basic), $12.99 (Standard) or $15.99 (Premium) per month
Hits: Original hit shows: Stranger Things, Bojack Horseman, The Witcher. Oscar bait movies such as The Irishman and Dolemite IsMy Name. Plus, content from other studios … for now.
Misses: It was once the best-programmed option on this list, but as Disney, Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal launch their own services, Netflix stands to lose a lot of content.
That’s weird: Netflix will spend $17.3 billion on original content in 2020 alone. Martin Scorcese might declare for the theater experience, but who else would have given him $140 million to make The Irishman? Netflix might end up killing movies to save them.
Peacock (launches July 15)
Price: Free (with ads, limited programming), $4.99/month (with ads, full programming) or $9.99/month (no ads, full programming)
Hits: Reboots of Battlestar Galactica (by Mr. Robot’s Sam Esmail) and Saved by the Bell. All the NBC shows, including Saturday Night Live; a robust selection of Universal movies; access to exclusive sports programming such as the Olympic Games.
Misses: It’s heavily dependent on a lot of content you’ve already seen—for free.
That’s weird: Much of its NBC content will also stream on Hulu until long-term deals run out.
• • •
Others include:
• BritBox: Stream full seasons of your favourite British programmes from BBC and ITV, including Doctor Who, Prime Suspect and Fawlty Towers. $6.99/month
• The Criterion Channel: Includes most of the films in the acclaimed international and cinephile film series. (What, no Armageddon?) $10.99/month
• Crunchyroll: A massive trove of anime series and films, some debuting on the same day as they do in Japan. (Their programming is subtitled; a similar, comparably priced service, Funimation, offers English dubs.) $7.99/month
• Kanopy: Watch indie hits (Lady Bird, Moonlight), acclaimed documentaries (I Am Big Bird), international cinema (Force Majeure) and more, absolutely free. All you need is a library card.
• Night Flight Plus: Cult viewing, including concert films, drive-in classics like Forbidden Zone and every episode of the channel’s namesake TV show. $4.99/month
• Shudder: This “essential source” for scary movies is a must for fans of gore, suspense and good old existential terror, from Hellraiser to Train to Busan. $5.99/month
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.
