Don't Cross the Online Streaming Services - Netflix vs Amazon

The Man In The High Castle is a novel by sci-fi legend Philip K Dick and I daresay that even if you haven't read his books you are at least familiar with some of the adaptations of his work; the most famous being Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? adapted into Blade Runner. The Man In The High Castle imagined a world in which the Allies lost World War II and America was invaded and occupied by the Nazis and the Japanese. The Japanese took the western half of the country and the Nazis the East. The book dealt with the "Americans" living under the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes. Amazon Prime have recently adapted this book into a television show with the same name and I recently watched the first episode. I should say that while I am a fan of Philip K Dick I have not read the book.

The first episode was very good and did a great job of setting up this new world, with references to the Nazis dropping an atom bomb on Washington DC and clearly that was one of the reasons the Allies lost the war. I remember reading the comments of a Japanese general saying an invasion of America would never work as while you could perhaps defeat their armies it had a huge population that was heavily armed and any occupation would fail. In the show, especially in the Eastern Nazi half of America, they have done a lot of work imagining how the Nazis have kept the country under their control, for example, the Hitler Youth has been established in America suggesting that children are being brought up under the belief that being a Nazi is a good thing. There is a resistance to both the Nazis and the Japanese but increasingly this seems to be from the older generations, people who lived in the old, free America.

The story in the first episode involved a film that showed the Allies winning World War II, films that are supposedly made by "The Man In The High Castle". Possession of such a film would be considered treasonous. Whether it is a propaganda film made by the resistance or that it is meant that the timeline had been altered so the Nazis won and this film is rare evidence of that change, has not yet been made clear. A thoroughly chilling scene is when a truck driver is pulled over by a police officer and while they are talking ash fell to the ground from the sky, the police officer explained that since it was Tuesday the hospital would have just euthanised anyone considered a burden to the state - the crippled, the old, etc. What is most chilling is that this officer is an American, someone who fought in World War II against the Nazis and Japanese, who doesn't seem appalled at the awful murder of these people, to him it is just a simple fact of life.

This show has been made by Amazon and is available to Amazon Prime subscribers. A few years ago the idea of Amazon making actual shows would have been laughable, they sold stuff, they didn't make it. Certainly no one would have thought that it would be well-made quality drama. Amazon's stable of shows it's made include Hand of God, crime drama Bosch and probably most famously Transparent. Transparent is a sitcom about an elderly man who came out to his family as transgender and would henceforth be living as a woman. The main character is played by the brilliant Jeffrey Tambor who has been in many things but I knew him most from the imprisoned housing developer George Bluth in Arrested Development. Transparent has been a big success for Amazon and they have been lauded for the sensitive handling of this issue and, importantly, being very funny (I have not actually gotten round to watching it but I've heard good things).

Amazon is essentially in a two-horse race with the other online streaming service Netflix and they too have made a host of original shows. I originally subscribed to Netflix as it was the only place to legally watch Breaking Bad, then they were making a new season of Arrested Development and so on and so on. Personally I think Netflix has made much better programmes with House of Cards featuring Kevin Spacey as probably their biggest success. Other great programmes are:

• Bojack Horseman - animated show about an actor who was on a hugely popular sitcom in the 90s but hasn't done much since. And he's a horse, but he's like a person, he talks, he wears clothes etc. It is hysterically funny but also at times very tragic.
• Orange is the New Black - a drama in a women's prison based on the real life story of a middle-class woman arrested for a drug related crime she committed ten years ago, this is someone who would never have expected to be sent to prison. The show is very good at looking at the reasons why these people are in prison and how bizarre the prison system in Amercia is, for example America has the highest percentage of people in prison in the world, around 700 people per 100,000 is in prison, in comparison in England and Wales it is 145 people per 100,000. 
• The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - Kimmy has been trapped in an underground bunker for years by an insane cult leader and the show started with their rescue. Kimmy goes out into the world trying to make a life after missing out on so much. This is a very dark premise for a sitcom but it is very funny and the cameo role of the cult leader is one of the best examples of casting ever.
• Daredevil - television series based on the Marvel comic books, very dark and brooding. One of the best decisions of the show is that he doesn't wear the Daredevil costume at first but fights crime dressed in black and a mask pulled over the top half of his face. The fight scenes have a brutal sense of realism to them, Daredevil hits someone and they get back up, that doesn't happen with most superheroes. Also just released is Jessica Jones, another Marvel comic adaptation that exists in the same world as Daredevil.

• They have brought back at least two great shows - the first being Arrested Development but also essentially making new episodes of Mr. Show with Bob and David, the HBO sketch show starring David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, under the new name of With Bob and David. I loved Mr. Show and never thought the show would be brought back, Bob Odenkirk has had recent success playing Saul Goodman/James McGill in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul and David Cross has subsequently played Tobias Funke in Arrested Development.

So far Netflix have made far more shows that Amazon and, in my opinion, better shows. But it is certainly true that both have made programmes that would have perhaps struggled to get aired on normal television channels.

In terms of which is the better service to subscribe to if you can only have one (in our household we subscribe to both) again I prefer Netflix. There is something odd but interesting about Netflix and the way they do business. Until very recently Netflix didn't organise it's programmes and films in the simple categories of Film - Horror or Television - Comedy, no instead they would have categories like Dark Films, Gritty Dramas, Classic Sci-Fi and often these labels seemed to have very little to do with the selection of films and programmes. While they have introdcued a more traditional system they have kept their peculiar categories as well.

Netflix also seemed to have more unusual one-off programmes and documentaries. It has the outstanding Ragnarok, the bizarre stand up from John Hodgman about the end of the world (who is my own personal hero and fake internet judge), old documentaries about the American Civil War, a lot of stand up comedy from American comedians not known well in the UK such as Mike Birbiglia, Nick Offerman and more.

If we must have a VHS-Betamax style showdown between these two online services I would definitely support Netflix - the weirder, more original one of the two and as inaccurate as this may be Netflix does feel more like the underdog against the giant corporation that is Amazon.