Normal People is one of the top hits available on Prime Video. But is this the best subscription streaming service available in NZ?
This story was first published in March.
As streaming services get ever more costly, you want to make sure you’re getting value for money. Reviewers Greg Bruce and Zanna Gillespie are here to help.
This one comes in last place because although it has the largest library, it is the last place I look for entertainment. The user interface on Prime Video, while very similar to Netflix and every other platform, is the ugliest and it’s precisely the vastness of their catalogue that turns me off - I frankly can’t be bothered trawling through its nearly 10,000 titles. The only reason we keep paying for Prime Video is because once or twice a year it has an unmissable show - like Normal People or Jury Duty or our current must-watch Mr and Mrs Smith - that and 2degrees gave us a free six-month subscription.
Similarly to Prime Video, our subscription to Disney+ hangs almost entirely on one or two shows. It’s also home to a number of series that Greg and I started together but he abandoned: Reservation Dogs, Tiny Beautiful Things and Only Murders in the Building. I’ve kept those on my list of shows I intend to finish if I’m ever lucky enough to be moderately sick in bed for several days in a row. From a business perspective, Disney+ is almost entirely kept afloat by its animated films - Moana was the most streamed movie across all platforms last year followed by Encanto - but if you don’t have children, $14.99/mth for The Bear is a bit steep.
The excellent business nous of whoever negotiated to get Netflix their own button on so many television remotes could be responsible for its continued reign as the most subscribed service. Or it could be that it’s the O.G of streaming services. For most of us, it was our first. Everything we know about on-demand viewing we learnt from our early experiences and experiments with Netflix. Now it’s the bosom you rest your head on when you’re sad, bored, lonely or facing an existential crisis, providing hours and hours of diverting trash like Love is Blind, watercooler documentaries like The Tiger King, true crime like American Nightmare and thousands of episodes of classic sitcoms like Seinfeld and Friends. Faced with a night at home alone, it’s Netflix I turn to for stereotypically female shows like Ginny and Georgia, Never Have I Ever, Sex Education, Schitts Creek… the list goes on. Who am I kidding? I love Netflix. It’s like a swaddle for a stressed adult, holding me firmly until I submit to its maternal embrace. My lizard brain ranks it number one.
Despite the fact there’s hardly anything on there, I’m charmed by Apple+. Aside from its two global hits - Severance and Ted Lasso - the latter of which was the most streamed original series last year, the catalogue isn’t flashy. It’s not loaded with award-winning series, just a smattering of content, much of which I’ve found quietly pleasing: Shrinking, Platonic, Dickinson and The Shrink Next Door to name a few. AppleTV+ content is almost entirely original, which aligns with the brand’s modus operandi I suppose, but it means you get by far the least bang for your buck. It’s not the first time I’ve paid too much for an Apple product and it won’t be the last.
If Netflix is the go-to for quantity viewing, Neon is the go-to for quality. I’ve not once in our decade-long quest to reduce household spending considered dropping Neon - it’s much cheaper than actually getting Sky I tell myself. I just know the moment we cancelled our subscription, there’d be a new season of White Lotus or Succession or some other hot new HBO series and we’d be signing straight back up. I think what I’ve established here is that this is a list of the order in which I’d cancel our subscriptions if these services were no longer a business expense for us. Neon is my Titanic door; I would let Greg freeze to death in the Atlantic before giving it up.
I know it’s had some good shows, but the first one that comes to mind is always the one about the television newsroom and I only watched the first episode of that, and it was a struggle to make it even that far. Thinking a bit harder, I remember the show where Steve Carrell was kidnapped by the serial killer was quite good. And Severance, of course. Is it worth $14.99 a month for those shows and 214 others? Only you know the answer to that question, and it’s no.
It has lots of money, and spends it mostly on Star Wars and the Marvel universe, and if you like that kind of thing you’re probably not reading this guide anyway. Outside of its fanboy-bait, Disney+ is still quite kid-heavy, presumably because no one has yet told the company that today’s kids only watch shorts. When I first signed up, I assumed I’d rewatch their big back catalogue of Wes Anderson movies, but I never have, and it’s becoming increasingly clear I never will. A big back catalogue, it turns out, is one of those things that is more valuable for sellers than buyers. The Bear, the third greatest series of recent times, is doing most of the heavy lifting in keeping Disney out of last place in this list. That and the fact Apple TV+ sucks.
When it appeared on the scene with its massive library, Bezos’s billions and the show about America if the Nazis had won, it seemed inevitable Amazon would do to streaming what it long ago did to bookselling. So why hasn’t it? My guess is that it’s because it’s made itself the platform of overspending on formulaic nonsense. When you’re throwing ludicrous amounts of money at surefire hits like The Rings of Power, and they aren’t hits, you know you’re doing something very wrong. We shouldn’t forget that this is the home of Fleabag, one of the best and most innovative comedies ever made, but we also shouldn’t forget it’s been a long time since Fleabag finished. Having said that, the best thing on TV right now is Prime Video’s Mr and Mrs Smith, so maybe the lesson is to never sleep on Bezos.
Its library is thinner than all the big five, besides Apple TV+ (whose library is so small as to technically disqualify it from the use of the term), but it sure knows how to back a winner. If these ratings were done on a power-to-weight ratio, Neon would be the clear winner. Sure, you’re not going to get the stream of new content you do with Netflix or Prime Video, but you will always have the warm feeling of knowing The White Lotus and Succession, the two greatest series of the last five years, are there waiting, whenever you need to rewatch them, which is often.
I have thought long and hard about why Netflix is the place I go first when I sit down at night, about why my finger is inexplicably drawn to the remote button with the company’s name on it, even though it has not hosted a single one of my favourite shows in recent years. Maybe it’s that its library seems infinite, even though I have now done research that proves it’s not. Maybe it’s that its algorithm seems to “get” me better than the others, although I have no evidence for that either. Maybe it’s its ratio of quality to quantity, or its superior search function, which provides suggested results even when the title is not in the Netflix library. Who knows and frankly who cares? I don’t watch hours and hours of Netflix true crime programming to improve my critical thinking skills.
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