Fawesome.tv

One of the better offerings of free films, it has quite a few thousand movies and television shows. Owned by FutureToday, a force behind several streaming channels that cover a range of topics, there are a few movies that you can revisit, like Inferno featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme or Sabrina the Teenage Witch with Melissa Joan Hart. Also featured are some great TV shows, like The Andy Griffith Show, 3rd Rock from The Sun and even Hell’s Kitchen with Gordon Ramsay. We also found the Daniel Craig-starrer Archangel, which was made by the BBC in 2005. The quality of stream is decent and there are subtitles with many of the offerings.

Tubi

For some time it was a movie lover’s well-kept secret. It offers access to movies as well as TV shows while money comes in through ads that appear. There are also titles with no ads. We streamed a few films like Fist of Fury, featuring the one and only Bruce Lee. Also enjoyable is Rio Lobo with John Wayne in the lead. After a long time I came across two films that I had seen in the 1990s on VHS — Silent Rage in which Chuck Norris plays a sheriff while the Western Bite the Bullet features Gene Hackman. As enjoyable as the movie collection is the selection of music-focused titles, like Rush: The Rise of Kings, Fleetwood Mac: Unbroken Chain and The Van Halen Story: The Early Years. If you are an Elvis Presley fan, who is interested in documentaries about the King, this is your destination — Elvis Presley: The Final Hours, King of Entertainment, Elvis: The Missing Years and so on.

WatchYour.TV

Honestly, when I first came across the website, it didn’t interest me because of the poor layout. Things were not promising when the channel listing popped up. But then the content is addictive. I like Westerns, so I found a way to spend a couple of hours. The quality of streams is not up to scratch and the audio quality is just about okay but there is variety. There is even a channel listing section. In case you are interested in horror, classic or cowboy films, visit this website.

Plex.tv

Chances are, most won’t even remember Tom Tyler starring in Adventures of Captain Marvel. Or do you want to watch James Stewart in Broken Arrow? Perhaps the popular detective series Dragnet from the 1950s? There is also an interesting selection of podcasts and some web shows. For those who have forgotten the The Lucy Show, it’s there. Plus, there are some news feeds from the likes of Financial Times, AP and The Guardian.

British Pathe

The Pathe News archive is iconic; it’s the home to important news reels, much of which can be accessed from what is now known as British Pathe. It’s not a streaming service; more of a library. We found singer Tony Brent, who — many may not know — was born in Byculla but then moved out of India. In the clip Brent looks at Mike Winters’s car while Bernie, Mike’s comedian partner, plays childishly. There are plenty of videos on Calcutta, like a demonstration in 1929, the Calcutta Cup in 1940 and of crowded streets. There is also a British Pathe TV tab on the website but that requires the user to pay.

Internet Archive

It’s a fantastic source for digital history. The home to WayBackMachine (takes you back in time to visit older versions of websites), the non-profit digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artefacts began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself. There are plenty of interesting videos to watch. For example, I enjoyed watching Charlie Chaplin’s One AM.

Netflix continues its surge

A still from The Queen’s Gambit Picture courtesy: Netflix

Subscription-free streaming services don’t have the “big” movies of the day and most of these are addresses for forgotten titles. But some of them are from your childhood and you would like to revisit them just for kicks.

Meanwhile, the growth of Netflix continues. The company ended last year with more than 200 million subscribers, a milestone that simply shows how people turned to the TV set during the pandemic. Not just Neftlix, subscriber growth is happening for other services too, like Disney+ and Apple TV+.

Giving Netflix a boost is its library of original content. According to The Wall Street Journal, Netflix signed up what it said was a record 37 million subscribers in 2020 and had a total of 203.7 million users when the year ended — more than twice as many as it had a mere three years earlier. Some of the big performers for Netflix have been Bridgerton, The Queen’s Gambit and a new season of The Crown.