Television

This week I inadvertently signed up to Amazon Prime. It’s a bit cheeky how they do it, you just click a button and…

HEY PRESTO!

You are signed up without even realising it. So know I have access to Amazon TV which based on last night’s entertainment is pretty good.  I sat down to watch The Man in the High Castle and was immediately struck by the high production values on offer. The show stars Rufus Sewell in what is going to be a very nasty Nazi character. Of course, he is British, so he would have to play a nasty person as in most US shows and movies.

I also have access to The Grand Tour, the new show from Jeremy Clarkson. He has apparently been paid a fortune to get his Top Gear crew back together (I’m assuming minus the producer who he thumped). Haven’t watched it, probably won’t, but Amazon are certainly getting their money’s worth out of him judging by the adverts for the new Fire Stick.

I was surprised as to how many movies are on Amazon, it really is another Netflix, and if you have Sky as well you would be paying a fortune to watch TV.

Let’s break it down:

NETFLIX :             £7.99 per month

AMAZON:           £79 per year

SKY:                       up to £50 per month

BBC:                       £140 per year

So per month this comes in at £76.17 for a month’s worth of TV, which in all honesty if you spent all your time in front of the screen is not too bad. The BBC comes in as the fairest in price at just £11 per month, followed by Amazon at £6.50ish. Of course, Sky are the most expensive and I have missed out BT because I don’t know anyone who has it!

With such good quality drama coming out of Amazon and Netflix their streaming service is really taking over the televisual nights. It would be interesting to get viewing figures for such shows as The Crown, or Designated Survivor, which have excellent production values and a strong audience; I guess it is measured by the number of subscribers.

The good thing with the Amazon Fire Stick or new Blu-ray players is that they make your TV a SmartTV, meaning you can access the internet on it and get the likes of Youtube and Facebook on your television. This means that when you wish to watch a movie and get the whole cinema experience you can watch a few trailers on Youtube, then flip over to the disc an watch the Blu-ray of your current film; sad, but it works.

Another good reason for getting a Smart TV is that this means you are in HD, and this looks great when you watch a series like The Crown. Another great series on Netflix is Stranger Things, a creepy and very watchable series set in the American suburbs of the 1980’s. It reminds the viewer of E.T. or those early John Carpenter movies. The music in this series of amazing, and very Carpenter-esque, it harks back to the good old days of decent viewing, great imagination and eerie music. It takes me back to my childhood, and that is something that, post-forty, I seem to be enjoying a little too much.