An article by John Koblin in yesterday’s New York Times says the days of separate subscriptions to multiple tv streaming service are waning. It’s just too complicated, too many passwords, too much keeping track. As a result, the bigger players are bundling popular services. Viewers need only one interface to find shows and movies on many different channels. For example, Amazon Prime Video users can watch HBO Max, Paramount+, etc.; Apple and other services are riding the aggregating train too.

According to research Koblin cites, nearly a third of all new streaming subscriptions are bought in bundles. So? And this will come as no surprise—media, tech, and cable companies are fighting to be the preferred one-stop shop. Media companies can offload marketing and other costs to the bundler. But they get smaller revenues because of the bundler’s cut. Amazon, for example, keeps from thirty to fifty percent of the subscription revenue. Netflix, as the largest subscription-supported company, with a wide variety of its own content, hasn’t needed to play with the bundlers so far.

I’ll have my eye out for where the streaming service MHz may land. We subscribe to it directly (along with a number of unbundled others, probably insanely duplicative). MHz offers foreign and international films and television series, usually with subtitles. We joined because it carries the whole Detective Montalbano series, set in Sicily. If you’ve missed this show, I’m sorry. A digression here: the producers scoured Sicily’s community theaters for good character actors. As a result, all the small parts (the landlady, the vamp, the car mechanic) are brilliant additions to the recurring cast.

We’ve watched the detective show Makari (Sicily again), and have started Imma Tataranni about a female deputy prosecutor in Calabria. All three shows have some over-the-top characters. They do involve murders but aren’t especially gory, and they include a fair bit of humor, created mostly by human ridiculousness, not snarky one-liners.

Another favorite is the French show, The Art of Crime, featuring a young Parisian police detective in the art crimes unit. He knows nothing about art (and cares less) and is teamed up with a young woman who works at the Louvre who knows everything and cares passionately. In a clever move, the artist involved (Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, etc.) “visits” the woman and they have interesting conversations. Weirdly charming. Her father is an eccentric Andy Warhol look-alike. We watched two episodes of the UK knock-off, Art Detectives, and weren’t impressed. In that one, the man is the art expert and the woman a former patrol officer. She’s smart, but most definitely second-fiddle. (Says a lot, right there.) No humor to speak of. We’re cutting our losses.

Whether you regard your televiewing as a buffet—one of this, one of that—or a full course meal of bundled choices, happy watching!

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