Streaming Video Power Rankings #90

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...in that I take a look outside and think, "Ehh, it's cold out there. Might as well stay in and watch some TV."

1) Acorn TV: Farewell, season 3 of Count Arthur Strong, and farewell, Acorn, for now. Nothing personal--as I have been saying the last few weeks, you offer an admirably hassle-free experience--but I have too much other stuff to watch right now. I did just discover another new find here, though: Grandma's House, a sitcom set entirely in...take a guess. So I look forward to catching up on that these next several days.

But, hey, would it kill you to bring back Drop the Dead Donkey? Hundreds of streaming services, and not one of them has it.

2) Netflix: I suppose many of you are excited about Guardians of the Galaxy and The Crown, but this was a slow week for Netflix. Hey, what's this original Christmas movie with Tim Allen and Jessica Alba? Anyway, in this household, the story is still Backstage, which has hooked my kids. Oh, I may have actually become semi-interested in what would happen next in one of the storylines the other day. Maybe.

3) Amazon Prime: Not saying I didn't enjoy watching the original Pardon My Blooper, but, man, it feels like 90% of it is staged/recreated/outright fake. The Marvelous Mrs. SomenamethatstartswithM is getting some buzz, and I may check that out soon. Silence is a movie that I should want to see because it's Martin Scorcese, but just between you and me, my eyes kind of glazed over when I read it was 161 minutes and remembered that it was about Jesuit missionaries. Hey, at least I admitted it.

The original Point Break just showed up, too, for no apparent reason. While I'm making confessions, I don't think I have ever seen the whole thing unedited and straight through.

4) YouTube: Time to get into the season with some vintage Christmas commercials and toy ads. But first, since I missed the Steelers game Monday night, I am going to get the holiday spirit by watching this upload of a 1980 Steelers/Packers game called by Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshire. Just go with it.

5) Hulu: I didn't actually get to watch any Hulu this week, but it debuted the second season of Shut-Eye, I think much to everyone's surprise, and solidified its status as the unofficial home of Marvel Comics TV on streaming by adding season 1 of FX's Legion.

6) Days of Dumont: Credit to this channel for adding a few shows in the last few weeks. I enjoyed Shadow Stompers, but forgive me for not managing to make it to The John Hopkins Science Review just yet.

7) Best Christmas Channel Ever 2017: A 100% free Roku channel that apparently has a pretty high opinion of itself. I don't think there's much here you can't find on YouTube, but it's nice to have stuff like old Perry Como specials and Captain Gallant in one place. I also give bonus points for the elimination of the charming but aggravating forced opening the channel had last year.

8) Warner Archive Instant: No updates in months, no Tweets since October 22. Is anyone home here? Well, I still rank them because they made possible a future episode of Battle of the Network Shows.

9) The Roku Channel: I remain fascinated by this official Roku joint which poaches content from many free channels and offers them under one roof. Is this a good thing for those other channels? For example. it has some of the content from #7 on this list--you can tell by the packaging of the thumbnails--but it's not initially clear that's the case. A friend just passed along some nice praise for this one, though, so it is gaining momentum. That's probably not a surprise considering Roku can push it in its channel store and give it plenty of publicity on its home screen.

Bottom line: There's a lot of free content here, and it's easy to use. Maybe eventually they will add some kind of watchlist and make it even better.

10) MLB.TV: Just because the Hot Stove talk makes me anxious for the 2018 season.