Your quar­an­tine guide to stream­ing video in the UK and US

Everyone’s pret­ty much stuck in the same boat at present: for the good of our­selves and the gen­er­al pub­lic, we’ve all sequestered our­selves at home, and the sit­u­a­tion is get­ting dire­ly bor­ing. Board games, recre­ation­al cook­ing, and philo­soph­i­cal debates with your flag­ging­ly patient sig­nif­i­cant oth­er can only fill so much time, and everyone’s DVD col­lec­tion is finite by nature of being phys­i­cal media. Stream­ing, now, reigns as king.

But the biggest barons in this fief­dom – your Net­flix­es, your Ama­zons, your Hulus – have squeezed out a good­ly num­ber of small­er oper­a­tors no less worth audi­ences’ time, mon­ey, and atten­tion. Here at LWLies, we’ve cor­ralled a line­up detail­ing the best stream­ing options avail­able to those who feel like they’re ready to start climb­ing the walls like a pal­lid-skinned J‑horror demon.

The big leagues: If you don’t already sub­scribe to these ones, you’re well aware of their exis­tence. Dis­ney+ col­lects the entire cat­a­logue of the Mouse House (well, almost; deep­est regrets to Song of the South super­fans) and the adja­cent worlds of Mar­vel and Lucas­film. Apple+ hoped to assert itself as the next Net­flix with orig­i­nal movies and TV, though it’s had trou­ble find­ing a bona fide hit among the ear­ly offerings.

Major UK play­ers: From the far-rang­ing offer­ings of the BFI Play­er to the day-and-date releas­es of Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma, which brings the best of spe­cial­ty the­atri­cal exhi­bi­tion into your liv­ing room. (They’ve got Por­trait of a Lady on Fire, to name just one red-hot title now play­ing.) BBC iPlay­er has a more eclec­tic selec­tion, with news seg­ments and sports and TV pro­gram­ming all found on the area’s biggest small-screen out­fit. For fur­ther TV options, peruse Sky and Now TV, All 4 (fea­tur­ing the pro­gram­ming of Chan­nel 4), or Rakuten TV (which also works in the States).

Cinephile spe­cial­ties: Our read­ers in North Amer­i­ca have been spoiled with an embar­rass­ment of options when it comes to watch­ing hard­er-to-find movies. The Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel expert­ly curates a selec­tion of clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma from its own famed col­lec­tion and beyond, with spe­cial series and sea­sons ori­ent­ed around direc­tor canons and oth­er themes. Fan­dor fea­tures a fine selec­tion of film as well, with spe­cial atten­tion paid to shorts, non­fic­tion cin­e­ma, and inter­na­tion­al imports.

Brits aren’t total­ly left out in the cold; Kanopy does the same, but with a price tag of free-nine­ty-nine to all those with a library mem­ber­ship. MUBI offers a rotat­ing selec­tion of 30 films, each one avail­able for 30 days, with a new one uploaded each day.

Niche treats: Shud­der is the first and last name in bou­tique hor­ror stream­ing, with a peer­less library of scary movies and a grow­ing ros­ter of orig­i­nal pro­duc­tions. Brown Sug­ar is a god­send to any­one look­ing to piece togeth­er a world-class blax­ploita­tion marathon or Pam Gri­er film festival.

Some out­fits have done the ser­vice of trans­port­ing their cat­a­logues to an online ver­sion. Shout! Fac­to­ry, a fine releas­er of vin­tage TV and rare films, has a pro­pri­etary stream­ing chan­nel, as does inde­pen­dent dis­trib­u­tor Mag­no­lia Selects. Those two are States-only, and for oth­er Yan­kees hop­ing to get a taste of some more limey pro­gram­ming, Acorn TV brings some of the UK’s finest small-screen enter­tain­ment across the Atlantic.