Britbox, a streaming service offering shows from ITV, the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5, has launched in the United Kingdom (via
BBC).
Priced at £5.99 a month, the joint-venture between ITV and the BBC is being pitched as an additional streaming service for viewers who want to view classic British television programs and films, rather than as a direct competitor to Netflix.
Britbox will mostly feature classic series like
Cracker,
Prime Suspect,
Brideshead Revisited,
Ashes to Ashes, with comedies including
Absolutely Fabulous,
Extras,
Blackadder and
Fawlty Towers. Some archive programs that have been on services like Netflix will now move to BritBox.
More than 600 classic episodes of
Doctor Who will be available to stream by Christmas, while shows and movies from Channel 4 and Film4's back catalogue will be available in 2020, and original shows from Comedy Central UK will also feature.
Other shows available on the service include
Downton Abbey,
Gavin & Stacey,
Wolf Hall,
Love Island and
Broadchurch, but it will also include new shows, starting with the drama
Lambs of God, which stars
The Handmaid's Tale's Ann Dowd,
The End of the F****** World's Jessica Barden, and Essie Davis from
The White Princess as nuns living on a remote island.
However, some of ITV and the BBC's biggest hits of recent years, such as
Killing Eve,
Peaky Blinders, and
Bodyguard, will not be on it at first either due to deals with other streaming platforms or because they are still on the broadcasters' own catch-up platforms.
The Guardian reports that the streaming venture has been given a major boost through deals with BT, Channel 4, and mobile company EE.
One of the deals will make BritBox available to tens of millions of EE mobile customers across the U.K., while a wide deal with BT – which owns EE – will make Britbox available to the millions of customers who subscribe to its pay-TV service.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 will provide thousands of hours of TV and film content to BritBox as part of a three-year deal, meaning shows from all the U.K.'s main TV channels will be available on one catch-up platform for the first time.
Britbox enters a streaming market quickly flooding with rival services jostling for attention, with
Apple TV+ having launched last week and Disney+ due to arrive on November 12.
BritBox launched in the U.S. two years ago with a different catalogue of content that has attracted 650,000 subscribers.
This article, "
BritBox UK Streaming Service Launches, Priced at £5.99 per Month" first appeared on
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