This post follows on from last week’s survey of the streaming services to which we subscribe. This time around though I am less interested in individual services and more interested in being able to watch actual shows.
The usual routine is my wife asking me about some show that was recommended to her and my looking it up and finding it is on a service to which we are not currently subscribed. But that has a solution. It is a problem that can be solved with money.
Also, since we use a Roku as our streaming device… shout out to our friend Caty who used to work there… finding out what service a given show is on is easy. Their search function works on a catalog of all the current offerings from all the channels supported by their device.
So when I saw something about a new show titled Kill Jackie starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, I searched it up on the device and it told me I could watch it on AMC+. This is better than, for example, the Wikipedia entry I have linked about the show, which tells me it is on Amazon Prime Video, which it is not, at least here in the US.
Kill Jackie
We do not currently subscribe to AMC+. It is in the “at need” category in my previous post on the topic. But we probably will subscribe at some point when there are a couple of shows there to watch. That is on the “future” list.
Roku helpfully showing me the channel options
But sometimes I play the “Hey, I wonder if we could watch X?” where X is some old show or film. That is often a successful search, more so for movies that television shows, but I can still hit the mark.
For example, I mentioned Reilly, Ace of Spies, an excellent 1983 production based on the book by Robin Bruce Lockhart, of which I had a copy at one point. (It was not as good as the show.) Anyway, I can find that on Britbox should I want to go indulge myself.
Likewise, The Sandbaggers, a series I have mentioned before is also now available on Prime Video. Hey, something to which I currently subscribe! Winner! But the last time I checked it was only available on some of the FAST channels (Free Ad Supported Television… or as we used to call it, television) which are simply appalling to watch, if only because their technical prowess at injecting ads is jarring and poorly timed. I know because I tried watching it on one of those channels… Pluto or Tubi, I forget which… and wasn’t up to the task.
Other shows in that era are somewhat less accessible. I went looking for Private Shultz at one point, a limited series… what we used to call a “mini-series” back in the day… about Nazi Germany’s operation to forge British five pound notes. It starred Ian Richardson, Michael Elphick, and Rula Lenska… RULA FREAKING LENSKA… about three of you are nodding your heads at that because she was mostly known in the US for a series of commercials she did that seemed to bank on her fame, which kind of failed because the commercial was the introduction to her existence for most of us… which should have give it some heft. But here in the US played on PBS back in the day and disappeared from site.
I had the whole thing on a VHS tape at one point, but we are a couple of decades past VHS now. It apparently never made it to DVD, which means the likelihood of it ever making it to streaming is close to nil.
But, as good as it was, it was also only six episodes of content. Perhaps it was not judged to be worth the effort. Or maybe the BBC erased the tapes. That was an ongoing problem with BBC productions for a while. There was an Honest Trailers episode back in 2018 about classic Doctor Who that summarized both the BBC policy and the lengths that have been gone to in order to restore old episodes. This came up as they crew attempted to watch all the episodes and came up against the BBC archive problem.
Also, it is a fun episode, as is the companion episode which goes through the modern series.
[The details about finding episodes is actually in the companion commentaries episode.]
Which brings me around to Dad’s Army. For no good reason, I decided I wanted to watch some of that. It is a little before my time, and another UK production… why is everything in my post today from the UK? I don’t know… but it was also very popular, ran to 80 episodes plus supporting material, and was shown here on PBS, which is where I am sure I watched some of it way back in the 1970s.
Also, it made the transition to digital. It was popular enough to be made into a DVD set.
Sure, there were problems. The first two seasons were in black and white and, while the BBC didn’t delete whole seasons of the show, some episodes went missing. But overall I figured that would give me a good shot at finding it on one of the streaming services. One of the eternal problems with television has been finding enough shows to keep people watching. While maybe a six episode mini-series isn’t worth the effort, surely a series with a nine year run that has already been converted to digital would be available.
Alas, no such luck.
I can see the 2016 film remake if I want, but the series isn’t on the list.
Now, that might be due to it being more popular in the UK. It might not have been deemed as worth the effort to bring stateside, but I can’t see if it is on some streaming service over there.
That is less of a problem with US shows. They seem less likely to be completely missing and more likely to simply not be available without paying an extra fee. Still, I run into some here that have oddly gone missing. Since we’re dabbling in that era, I found things like Shogun and Roots were available for rent, but oddly Holocaust was missing. I know that didn’t get erased. I watched it in the 90s on VHS from Hollywood video. But it doesn’t seem to show up when I search Roku… though maybe it is hiding in there behind Cannibal Holocaust, Zombie Holocaust and Robot Holocaust. (Hey, there is an MST3K episode where they watch Robot Holocaust… but it is on Pluto with their obnoxious ads.)
Anyway, the message here is that it isn’t always about have the wrong subscription… sometimes things just aren’t there at all.