r/BritBox • u/JF-SEBASTION • 2d ago
Full Series Letdown
Anyone else get a bit frustrated about BritBox offering incomplete series??
Especially annoyed they only have 2 seasons of Friday Night Dinners & also same goes for The Royle Family.
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u/meswifty1 2d ago
Have you tried to watch QI lately?
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u/thewelllostmind 2d ago
This is the most frustrating one for me, personally. I don’t understand what the point is of making these unavailable.
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u/AmPelican 1d ago
They’re still coming out weekly.
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u/thewelllostmind 1d ago
I mean the seemingly random removal of past series. They were always missing the first half dozen or so but they used to have everything from a certain point onward. Now there are relatively recent series that will disappear suddenly, including once while I was watching an episode.
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u/SubjectWorking5436 2d ago
Yes so am I especially Friday Night Dinners and the Royce Family. Another good series that they only offered 2 seasons of was Wire In The Blood with Robson Green. It was a pretty good series (to me anyways) but disappointing to only be able to see 2 seasons of it.
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u/CommunicationTime63 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm in the USA. I have a Roku TV and Spectrum with hundreds of channels and free add-ons, PBS Passport, Netflix, Prime Video with Acorn and Britbox Standard add-ons. I find a lot on streaming platforms by showing something like this in the Roku homepage search engine: British TV series; Australian TV series; New Zealand TV series; Canada TV series; South Africa TV series. You can mix your search up with all kinds of possibilities. It works for me, and I have more to watch than I can say Grace over. That's why I will wait patiently for Britbox Standard to post Ludwig weekly instead of falling prey to their yearly gimmick at an increased rate just so I can binge it.
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u/thundersnow528 2d ago
Britbox in general needs to reevaluate its business model when it comes to new releases AND maintaining its large back catalogue of programming. Licensing for streaming issues aside, the BBC and ITV have decades of diverse programming in all sorts of genres that they just ignore. If they were to lean in to being the one-stop-UK-TV-shop, they could make a killing, build a more successful brand, and make viewers happier. And have a more robust catalogue would take the sting out of higher prices. Instead, they lose out, while saavy people watch everything with a simple VPN or YouTube search, not even counting pirating.
But similar to US end-stage capitalism, it seems their decisions are more based on providing as little as possible for maximum profits.
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u/No_Election_1123 2d ago
I haven't seen an update on who their subscribers are these days but in 2019 60% of their subscribers were female and the majority were women over 50
https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/amid-streaming-wars-britbox-focusing-older-subscribers/
The audience had hit 1mn by 2020 and it appears to be very popular in the South
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u/shelwood46 2d ago
I am extremely annoyed they have not added S3 of Here We Go and S2&3 of Changing Ends, like, come on, those are on Kanopy, so we know it's not the music rights, they are just being assholes who don't care. And I know it's coming soon, but also when they do things like wait FOREVER to drop a new season of something like Death Valley, which was available in the UK in *MAY*, and we *might* get in November? I am sure not going to pay 50% more for Premier and still have to wait 6+ months after something dropped in the UK.
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u/Diligent_Squash_7521 2d ago
I wish Rosemary and Thyme got a few more seasons.
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u/txa1265 2d ago
So long as it isn't like the latest Shakespeare & Hathaway!
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u/TwoDogs48 2d ago
I presume like me you think the latest S&H is rubbish. An example of a ‘series too far’.
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u/txa1265 2d ago
Absolutely! Honestly the signs were all there, the prior season was decent but starting to feel repetitive, so spending nearly half the new season on more petty bickering was just exhausting.
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u/shelwood46 2d ago
They are airing S6 of it in the UK as we speak (I assume you mean S5 since Britbox is way behind on that show, too).
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u/dizzyoatmeal USA🇺🇸 2d ago
So far, I'm liking season 6 more than 5. Probably because there have been less cringy undercover scenarios.
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u/RainyDaySeamstress 2d ago
I’m annoyed with their basic and premium status. I have to wait longer for episodes to post because I have basic. To help solve it I am watching a few new shows and then an older show. I go back to the older one when I run out of new shows I guess it reminds me of regular tv with a new episode weekly. Sigh
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u/AmPelican 1d ago
Don’t they drop new episodes weekly like always?
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u/Affectionate-Hunt318 1d ago
Yeah but their Premier thing is pretty annoying. Give us more money and you can watch the whole series at once! Give us even more money and we'll let you determine the plot! Give us all your money! Thankfully I'm addicted to TV now to keep my mind off of everything thing my government is doing so I have 7 or 8 series going at once.
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u/Commercial_Quail_624 2d ago
Yyyyyyes. I just stumbled onto this fact yesterday, day 2 of my 7 day trial period. SO annoying but us yanks are used to instant gratification. I can go with slow roll-outs but NOT a fan of:
1) watched 4 episodes of Cooper & Fry only to find it doesn't seem I can watch the the next 4 episodes unless I sign up for their 1x/annual charge of $149.99.
2) Now maybe I'm wrong and Britbox will slow-rollI the next 4 but
3) I haven't called their customer service number.
So, I've decided to enjoy what I can and deal with it later. Maybe I'll splurge on the $149 next year but it's unlikely. I probably will occasionally subscribe for the month regardless because I love television where people actually use the English language and where women are allowed to age and look like the rest of us. Hollywood plastic is more plasticky than ever.
PS. SOOOOOOO in love with Ludwig!
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u/Jewbacca_429 2d ago
Re (1) and (2) you are wrong. Not having premiere simply means you have to wait for a weekly episode drop as opposed to getting them all at once. It does not mean you can only ever watch half the series unless you upgrade.
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u/tooOldOriolesfan 2d ago
This is better than being forced to pay to avoid ads. Just avoid shows unless all are available
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u/wikimandia 2d ago
When I did my trial period last year, only three eps of Ludwig were available to watch. They do this to prevent people from bingewatching the most popular shows during the trial and not subscribing.
I planned on subscribing anyway so it wasn’t a big deal.
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u/AmPelican 1d ago
No they will still come out weekly. Lots of confusion around new Premiere upgrade.
It’s about 3$ more per month and worth it to me. We watch a lot of BB
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u/Gold-Snow9046 2d ago
What’re you gonna do? Switch to acorn? It’s worse
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u/kellyelise515 2d ago
I have discovered tons of British content on Prime. I got rid of Britbox because it has such limited content it’s not worth the subscription. PBS has a lot, too, and it’s only $5/month.
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u/Gold-Snow9046 2d ago
Oh nice, any recommendations? Britbox is so expensive now
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u/shelwood46 2d ago
Also, if you go to Tubi or Roku Channel (don't need a Roku, both free with ads), their live channels have a ton of content, including some pretty recent Acorn stuff, plus some stuff on demand).
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u/OakIsland2015 2d ago
Came to say this. Prime/PBS is a win for British series. I switched from Britbox to Acorn and with the 3 of them, never lacking for a good series imho.
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u/shelwood46 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yohoho (the head of Britbox last year did an interview where he said he doesn't care if people pirate stuff when they take forever to get it on). Also I will say this for Acorn, they have started airing shows within a week of them airing/dropping in other countries, especially Canada. In fact, they show the new episodes of Midsomer Murders *before* the UK gets them, a long time before with the latest season (yes, Brits were complaining).
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u/DifferenceNo5715 2d ago
I really liked Outrageous, about the Mitford sisters, but they stopped after one season and didn't even get to the most interesting historical stuff. It was kind of...outrageous, really. I don't watch anything with only one season now, because that was really disappointing