Peacock Survey

January 4, 2021 8:16 AM

Are you one of the vanishingly small number of people who subscribed to the paid version of Peacock? Or perhaps someone who is considering doing so because of The Office? Let's talk about what they have that is and isn't worth seeing.
posted by DirtyOldTown (13 comments total)

Things I have seen that I liked:

-Escape to the Chateau - reality show - A designer and an engineer (both known quantities to UK tv viewers) buy a chateau in France and fix it up to serve as a wedding venue and their family home. Sincerely one of the most pleasant things to watch on TV.
-Five Bedrooms - Nobody does dramedy quite like Australia. Five middle-aged singles buy a home together and end up a makeshift family.
-Hitmen - A light-hearted black comedy starring Mel and Sue from The Great British Bake Off as a pair of barely competent hired killers.
-The Amber Ruffin Show - A US late night comedy show, which is not usually my bag at all, but I just think she's great.
-Mehdi Hassan - This is like Rachel Maddow for people who get their news from Twitter instead of Facebook.

Stuff I have seen I didn't like:
-Brave New World - I bought the service for this and was sorely disappointed. Started uneven and got steadily worse.
-Intelligence - Cringe workplace/spy comedy with David Schwimmer as the most awful American boor imaginable, sent to work with UK counterparts.
-Noughts and Crosses - A person would need a spreadsheet to follow this racism turned backwards scifi thing from BBC. It bored me too much to bother.

At this point, I'd give their sole original scripted series an F and their news shows a solid B. Their slate of licensed shows from other countries is uneven but has some real winners and would be the not likely reason I'd re-up after my initial year (which I got on an early subscription special for $25 total) expires.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:30 AM on January 4, 2021

Announced upcoming new shows:
-Law & Order: Hate Crimes
-Angelyne
-Battlestar Galactica
-Dr. Death
-New York Undercover
-MacGruber
-Punky Brewster
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:44 AM on January 4, 2021

They have overflow English soccer and they’ll have the Olympics eventually, right? Might pay for that. Not paying for this.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 8:50 AM on January 4, 2021

When I went to sign up for the free version, it turned out I get the premium account as part of my cable package. I haven't really started poking around though -- the only reason I signed up in the first place was to be able to see the 'Lassie Come Home' second Psych movie, which I finally got around to finishing over the holiday. And I watched the first episode of 'Hitmen' because of the Fanfare thread, and enjoyed it.

So, yeah, I'll probably watch some more shows as the mood takes me. But I won't be spending money to keep the channel if it becomes a premium add-on to my cable bill.
posted by oh yeah! at 1:30 PM on January 4, 2021

I've seen Noughts and Crosses, Brave New World, and Cleopatra in Space on it, from what I remember. But I don't remember paying them any money, so if any of those are paid, they must have been during a trial period.

I've already seen the Office, so I don't feel the need to do so again.
posted by one for the books at 5:10 PM on January 4, 2021

I'm really enjoying it, but I am also well aware that having only paid about $2/month factors heavily into my cost/benefit analysis. I do also like the pitch for several of the upcoming shows as well as some of the proposed but not yet in production shows, including one in development with a proud dad who can't wait for his prodigal son to return home only to find he now has a daughter (played by Laverne Cox.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:13 PM on January 4, 2021

I signed up for Premier League (and a little disappointed because there have been very few games on it, and it's a substantially better platform than the NBCSports streaming service. Other than a couple episodes of Amber Ruffin (who is a delight) and the Lassie Come Home movie, I have watched absolutely nothing else on it. Nothing has really appealed that much (including The Office, which is on like 12 hours a day on Comedy Central anyway).
posted by General Malaise at 3:04 PM on January 5, 2021

As I understand it, because I’m on Comcast I get Peacock free. Can someone walk me through the process of getting my free Peacock and watching it via the Peacock app on my Roku? Every time I dip my toe in the process, things kinds get murky for me.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:51 PM on January 5, 2021

I love it because I’m a Top Chef superfan; in addition to having all seasons of Top Chef (except the most recent), it has all seasons of Top Chef Masters and both seasons of Top Chef Junior! I also enjoyed rewatching Murder, She Wrote, which was a family watch when I was a child, and am looking forward to diving into Columbo. I’ve also enjoyed their movies.

I’ve been sticking to familiar “comfort watches” during the pandemic”—I have the feeling I’ll branch out more as the vaccine rollout continues and deaths begin to drop, but rn, Peacock is the comfort TV I need.
posted by epj at 10:22 AM on January 7, 2021

WWE Network Moves to Peacock as WWE Reports Record Profits


I'm not a wrestling person but this still struck me as big news for two reasons. One, it all but guarantees Peacock will be around for a while. Much like Howard Stern moving to XM, this is the move of an ostensibly niche product that is actually humongous to a marginal service that is going to explode in popularity as a result. Two, it's a very smart way for Peacock to leverage one of the strongest parts of its platform--how well it handles live sports--that was going to waste. They put a ton of development into making a very smooth, satisfying live streaming sports product. It's much better than Amazon's or Hulu's imo, but with the Olympics delayed/canceled, it was mostly only being used for overflow soccer.

Their plan for launch: push everything in on the Olympics, back it with a solid and satisfying app, and spend the profits on other shows, was actually a good plan were it not for COVID-19. Now they can spend wrestling profits to make shows instead.

Just no more Brave New World. Ugh.

People laugh at Peacock right now but it will have an extra ten to twenty million users within this quarter.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:42 AM on January 25, 2021

Although if I am being honest, this mostly only matters to me because I want the Amber Ruffin Show to continue to exist. IDGAF about wrestling but if WWE money keeps Amber on then cool cool cool.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:46 AM on January 25, 2021

Well, between this and them shutting down/moving NBCSN, I’ll probably wind up at least occasionally subscribing to the ‘Cock, so they’re doing better now than they were.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:54 PM on January 25, 2021

Yeah, I subscribe to them during figure-skating season and cancel after Worlds.
posted by humbug at 6:55 PM on February 2