BritBox: UK broadcasters enter the streaming wars as new service launches

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BBC/ITV

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Clockwise from top left: Gavin & Stacey, Love Island, Victoria and Happy Valley will be on BritBox

BritBox, a streaming service offering shows from ITV, the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5, has launched in the UK.

McMafia, Love Island, Victoria, Wolf Hall and Gavin & Stacey are among the shows available from Thursday.

C4 and C5 have come on board after ITV and the BBC announced BritBox as a way to get into the paid streaming market.

The service will cost £5.99 per month and will mostly feature classic series, but will also include original shows, beginning with Lambs of God.

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Ann Dowd, who plays Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale, will be in Britbox’s new show

The drama will star The Handmaid’s Tale’s Ann Dowd, The End of the World’s Jessica Barden and Essie Davis from The White Princess, and will be available within the next month.

Reemah Sakaan, ITV’s group director for streaming, said there was a “whole slate of original programmes” in development.

While the service will be a second or third subscription for many viewers, it will be able to rival the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV+, she said.

“It’s got the widest range of UK box sets of any service,” she said. “Ostensibly the other streamers are US-focused so they make dramas for the US market, whereas BritBox is the faces, people and places that you know.”

Some archive programmes that have been on services like Netflix will now move to BritBox, she said.

“For some time we’ve been bringing our shows back home and now that we’ve got a destination in BritBox, that’s something we’ll be doing more actively. We’ll still be working in partnership with Netflix and Amazon and all of the other streamers.”

How does the price compare with other services?

  • BritBox – £5.99 per month for HD and multi-screen viewing
  • Netflix – £5.99 for basic package rising to £8.99 for a standard plan, including HD on two-screens
  • Amazon Prime – £5.99 on up to three screens simultaneously
  • Now TV – £8.99 for entertainment pass, with optional extras – Cinema Pass (£11.99), Sports (£33.99), Kids (£3.99)
  • YouTube Premium – £11.99

Dramas on the service at launch include Cracker, Prime Suspect, Brideshead Revisited and Ashes To Ashes; while comedies include Absolutely Fabulous, Extras, Blackadder and Fawlty Towers.

More than 600 classic episodes of Doctor Who – broadcast between 1963 and 1989 – will be available to stream for the first time by Christmas. Shows and movies from Channel 4 and Film4’s back catalogue will be available in 2020, and original shows from Comedy Central UK will also feature.

However, some of ITV and the BBC’s biggest hits of recent years, such as Killing Eve and Bodyguard, will not be on it because existing streaming deals are in place.

BritBox launched in the US two years ago and has a different catalogue of content, with 650,000 subscribers.

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