My husband and I resolved to reduce our home entertainment budget for 2019. To that end, immediately after Thanksgiving and upon a couple of recommendations gleaned from various tech podcasts I subscribe to, I ordered a Roku Premiere+ and installed it the first week of December. Within a couple of days of installation, I signed us up for Hulu (with live TV and cloud DVR) and Philo, maintaining our existing Dish, Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions in place so we could do a one-to-one comparison for the entire month of December. By the middle of the month, we were no longer using Dish at all. The day after Christmas, I cancelled our Dish and officially cut the cord, saving over half the cost and ending up with more entertainment options. Netflix may be next on the chopping block but that will have to wait until we finish out January now since I neglected to cancel that streaming service before the autopay went through. The real challenge will be next year’s F1 season for Terry.
Meanwhile, I spent much of the last quarter of 2018 catching up on science fiction series I’d neglected or anticipated due to work projects.
- Man in the High Castle
(season three via Prime Video Oct 2018)
- I still love this show. Season two was a bit weak and season three left most of PKD behind, but I still loved it.
- Travelers (season three via NetFlix Dec 2018)
Every single episode was great. Which is weird for me because usually there’s at least one or two duds.
- Star Trek Discovery (on DVD Dec 2018)
- Hmmm … I’m still mulling this one over. I liked the episode Frakes directed (which was the ‘turning’ point in the season) but as the series progressed, it became more and more obvious there was an agenda aside from good SF story telling underlying the relaunch of Star Trek.
- Westworld
(season two on DVD Dec 2018)
- My favorite make-my-brain-hurt cerebral show returned with more fodder for me to chew on. Another show I could watch and rewatch and discover new angles and revelations I missed.
- Doctor Who (via Philo streaming Dec 2018 / Jan 2019)
Kudos for the first female Doctor- Too much unnecessary subliminal (but never subtle) subtext commenting on current American (not British) political landscape.
Series I started (but not yet finished)
- The First
- I’ve watched the first three or four episodes, one of which didn’t seem to have any relevance to the previous episodes nor even of a slightly science fictional bent.
- Future Man
- I’ve only watched the pilot/first episode. It’s a bit too guy-humorish for my tastes. Not sure I will return (unless I can’t find anything else to watch)
- Manifest
- This has been a good drama show (good acting and writing) and an interesting but nominal science fiction conundrum.
Queued up for Q1 2019:
- Handmaid’s Tale (season two via Hulu Mar 2019)
- Good Omens (coming in 2019 via Prime Video)
- Stranger Things (coming Summer 2019 via Netflix)
Let me know (via comments to this post) if I’m missing a new or good SF show currently running and upcoming.
if you haven’t checked out Orville, you should do so. In some ways, it’s truer to the Star Trek franchise than Star Trek Discovery is (with occasional forays into Seth McFarlane-type humor). But it’s a surprisingly thoughtful show.
I watched the first season of the orville and it was okay and occasionally good. I’ll binge watch it when a few more episodes of the second season have aired. Thanks for the suggestion.
Haven’t even heard of half of those series.
We get just the broadcast channels. Would like just a bit more, but don’t know how to approach it.
You can watch most of them by checking out the DVDs from your local library. That’s how I watched Star Trek Discovery and Westworld.