Amazon Britbox
Greed has bit and backfired once again. I have been enjoying short clips from Yes, Minister, a British comedy series from the 1980s. It’s only available at all because someone at the BBC got their heads on straight after the advent of VCRs and stopped recording over old programs. I looked online for ways to stream entire episodes; the best option looked to be Amazon Prime, to which I already subscribe. Each episode cost 2 dollars (well, 1.99, but who’s fooled by that?). I bought one episode to see if they’d be worth my time. It was great; I laughed and laughed. So I looked at other options. Amazon Prime would let me buy the entire first season outright for 13 dollars, or I could sign up for a week free of Britbox, a streaming service cross-promoted on Prime that specializes in British television. I don’t want to sign up for yet another service, not even for a week free; I’ve had three other media subscriptions in the past and found I didn’t use them much. Instead I surf Youtube and pay a monthly fee to dodge their advertising.
Entire episodes of Yes, Minister were not available unaltered on Youtube; I checked. Over the course of a couple weeks I bought on Prime and watched online three seasons of Yes, Minister. I enjoyed them very much. The voluminous vocabulary and flawless delivery of five-dollar words in quick succession, plus the ridiculous and yet spot-on portrayal of government functioning, were highly entertaining. I find myself thinking in the suave, persuasive tones of Sir Humphrey Appleby, high ranking British civil servant, ostensibly serving the people as civil servants are wont to do, but really serving his own and his department’s interest, including and above all, going over and around the minister over his department.
There was one episode not available to purchase in season three: episode 8. It was billed as a Christmas special and some of the best clips came from it. Amazon Prime insisted that to access it I would have to sign up for Britbox. After all, a week’s trial of Britbox was free; just hand them your financial information so they can charge you the instant the week ends. I refused to sign up.
Dailymotion has online video to watch free. They advertise, but to get the last episode of the season, I could stand it. I found a whole list of videos labeled “season 03 episode 08” or some variation. I picked one and watched. Too short; it stopped mid-episode. Apparently the Christmas special was twice as long. So I picked a longer one. This time it had a dark fog around the corners of the picture and the video cut off at 59 minutes exact, with no ending. I pulled up a video about 8 minutes longer, and skipped to the end. This video was unnaturally zoomed in so you couldn’t see the entire frame, plus the sound was out of sync. I thought, I’m close to the end; I’ll endure. Sure enough, it reached the end of the episode. My daughter walked in and talked to me during it, so I missed the full experience.
In frustration I did something else for a while. When I came back, I thought, what about season four? Amazon lists a season four, and I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll try that.
Season four is one episode. It’s an hour long, and ends with the minister becoming the prime minister. In other words, it’s the Christmas special. I could buy it; no Britbox subscription required.