Better Late than Never

Catching up

While streaming services have managed to mostly turn my hundreds of DVDs into redundant worthless junk, the services do have many redeeming qualities.

What I hate about the streaming services is that there are dozens of them, and getting worse every day. As a society, we went from 3-5 TV channels to choose from, to cable with a dozen or so channels and one premium channel (HBO) to now cable, internet and a bunch of channels that used to be free are now expecting you to pay separately for each. It’s gotten completely out of hand. Want to watch a Mariner's game? Buy the streaming service. What was once free, paid for by advertising, now costs a monthly subscription for a mediocre product.

Sad.

Meanwhile the more traditional streaming services keep jacking up the prices, or, adding advertisements, or worse, if you don’t want advertisements, you pay extra.

For now I pay for a handful of streaming services. I’d cut back since I no longer watch anything on half of them, but my partner insists they stay because she watches all these (to me) shows discussing house flipping, renovating homes, food challenges, gold mining, off grid living, etc. etc. etc.

Ugh.

But the one thing I really like is being able to finally discovering older shows that are available to watch that I might have overlooked before. Or, being able to rewatch series that I had enjoyed when they first aired.

One such show for example is The Grand Tour.

I’ve never watched a single episode of Top Gear, ad on it’s face appeared to just be a show about three blokes driving wildly expensive European sports cars. Never bothered to see what the fuss was all about. And when it changed to The Grand Tour, again, I thought it was just more of the same. The series had run from 2016 to 2024 and I never watched a single episode.

But then Clarkson’s Farm came out on Amazon Prime, and I was hooked on that show. I loved it’s format, and it often includes references to The Grand Tour (TGT).

And You Tube started feeding me clips of the show, highlighting some of the funnier antics of the three presenters (Clarkson, Hammond and May), which intrigued me.

So a few days ago I started watching it.

Now, perhaps if I wanted to be a completist, I’d have started with Top Gear. I assume, much like Clarkson’s Farm, I’m not getting perhaps some references to the earlier show in TGT. I might watch it eventually, but I am thoroughly enjoying TGT on it’s own. But the show is hilarious. Was not what I was expecting.

If you’ve never watched it, it is basically three blokes driving wildly expensive cars, but that is just a small part of it. They also have a track they have professional drivers use to test track times to see which cars are the fastest. They also have challenges, many of outlandish design, to complete given by the show’s executive producer.

I’ve only watched a handful of episodes from season 1, but already one segment stuck out.

Battleship, the game.

Well, not the traditional table top game. Oh no. Something a bit more supersized.

Watch it here.

What a hoot.

I’ve also went back a while ago to watch shows like Justified, which I didn’t catch when first released.

But with so many streaming services, you have to be selective or you’ll end up spending thousands of dollars a year. Some of the services I do subscribe to:

Amazon Prime. Doesn’t everyone have an account by now? Lots of free movies and original great series, like the aforementioned Clarkson’s Farm and The Grand Tour. The free shipping on Amazon orders eventually pays for itself.

You Tube. Simply to get rid of the stupid annoying ads. Curses on channels that insert their own ads in their content. Boo, I say. Boo.

Netflix. The Granddaddy of them all. I do like their comedy specials and other original content.

Paramount+. Huge library of movie content, plus original programming like the mini series “The Offer”.

What are your thoughts on streaming services?