Netflix, Max, Hulu, Which To Cancel, Which To Keep As Prices Rise

While it’s great that the Writers Strike is over and the Actors Strike probably will be soon, you may be able to guess how the big streamers and studios will offset some of the new costs they have to pay, now that those groups want to be compensated fairly.

Have you enjoyed recent price hikes for all your services? Well, here come some more, no doubt. As such, you may want to know which services are actually worth keeping, and which are worth giving up as you try to juggle them. Doing all of them is quickly adding up to become more than cable bills used to be, so you have to pick and choose.

I’m not necessarily doing this all by price, but a lot of times by “batting average,” hits related to total content. Though vast libraries also have their appeal as well at times. Here’s how I would rank the current streaming landscape based on a number of factors:

1. Apple TV+ (Best Shows: Foundation, Shrinking, For All Mankind, Slow Horses) – Still costs less than most other services, albeit its prices are going up like anything else. This is easily the best batting average service out there. Not that many series overall, but the pedigree is often top notch, and the vast majority of new content on Apple is generally worth watching. They do quality control better than any other streamer right now.

2. Max (Best Shows: The Last of Us, Succession, Chernobyl, Warrior, The Sex Lives of College Girls) – In addition to those current shows, we obviously have a giant catalogue of hugely classic HBO series that is a bonus here, but it depends whether or not you already watched them a decade or two ago, and how much you care to again (I loved Oz, but never again). Despite all the WB-HBO-Discovery Drama, there is a solid slate of series lurking in here, and Max, in the non-HBO era, can still produce extremely high quality hits.

3. Hulu (Best Shows: Reservation Dogs, What We Do In The Shadows, Only Murders in the Building, The Great, The Bear) – Hulu does really well with comedy, as you can see above. Their partnership with FX amplifies this, and they get a lot of great series that way. There are also some incredible dramas in there like Dopesick and The Dropout.

4. Netflix (Best Shows: Stranger Things, Dark, The Crown, Peaky Blinders, Squid Game, Bridgerton, One Piece) – Long list there, and there could be plenty more on it. Netflix is the reason this whole madness started, and while it’s batting average is quite bad, the sheer volume of shows it produces means there are some hits and some quality offerings buried in there. Quite a lot, in fact, provided you can find ones that were not killed off on a cliffhanger. But as the highest priced option here, it’s a significant investment. And the one most likely to keep raising prices in time, I’d say.

5. Amazon Prime Video (Best Shows: The Boys, Reacher, The Expanse, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) – This is sort of cheating because Amazon has the additional factor of a video subscription feeding into all its other services, including free shipping. But when Amazon finds hits, they are quite good, and many of its best ones are not what they’re spending the most money on like Citadel or Rings of Power. There are some great ones in there.

6. Disney Plus (Best Shows: Bluey, The Mandalorian, She-Hulk) – This is the most conditional one. Do you have a family with young kids? You probably need it. Do you really love Star Wars and Marvel? Then you may tolerate it. But outside these groups, Disney Plus has had a tough time producing anything of significance, with few exceptions.

7. Peacock (Best Shows: The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, New Girl, Parks and Recreation, Twisted Metal) – Alright you may notice a pattern here, that Peacock’s best shows are ones that have aired a while ago, but now serve as great repositories for the “watch whatever” series, now that the rights to some shows like The Office have reverted back to them instead of Netflix. Their original shows? I genuinely don’t think I can name more than one, Poker Face, and that was pretty good. But the old collections alone are worthwhile. Oh yeah! I forgot Twisted Metal, a miracle that it was actually good.

8. Paramount Plus (Best Shows: Yellowjackets, 1923, Mayor of Kingstown, Rabbit Hole) – Paramount Plus is probably down a “tier” from most others alongside Peacock, but it does have a few good offerings. Its “Yellowstone universe” is enjoyed by many, and Yellowjackets has at least one good season, now pulled over from Showtime. I actually want to check out Rabbit Hole myself soon.

Those are my picks, let me know what I may be missing.

Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.