Acorn TV is an American streaming service that airs predominantly UK TV shows, with a few offerings from a handful of other territories’ thrown in for good measure.
It seems as though American culture vultures can’t get enough of anything ‘British’, and really, who can blame them? UK TV provides some of the best programming in the world, with masses of quaint culture mystery murders through to gritty, hard-hitting police dramas and psychological thrillers.
The additional content that the Acorn Media Group has thrown in on top of its UK selection comes from Canada, Australia, and a few others. Chiefly, though, much of its catalogue comes from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, All3Media, DRG, and ZDF.
To give you a decent taste of what you’re going to get—if you haven’t heard of the channel before—think Bloodlands, The Attaché, Law & Order: UK, The Silence, and Deadwater Fell. Then there’s a generous provision of documentaries if those are more your taste, including such titles as Paradise Gardens with Monty Don to The Cat Hospital or even their biographical feature about The Real Prince Philip.
Acorn TV makes a great add-on to your existing viewing. It’s never going to provide you with the same sort of blockbuster action that Netflix and Prime do, but for loose change ($5.99 US/month or £4.99 UK/month), it’s certainly not going to break the bank.
If you’re outside these two territories and are pining for some traditionally British drama, documentaries, or murder mysteries, then it’s well worth a shout. There’s enough good, hearty, unmistakably British content there to keep the most hungry satisfied.
Almost all of the viewing on Acorn TV in the UK is or has been available on another channel at some point. Brits will pass a glancing eye over the shows and features on Acorn TV, seeing it as a platform where they can find some old favourites or current shows that have disappeared from the mainstream channels. If they fancy re-running a series they might have missed before or fancy dipping into some mid-week afternoon drama, Acorn is a great place to start.
For US viewers, it’s a real first point of contact for that quintessential and charming British TV. Acorn TV premiered Detectorists, Vera, Inspector George Gently, and Midsomer Murders in America. British culture is a real passion amongst many American residents, and Acorn is a great place to soak it all up.
Given that British TV providers distribute the bulk of their content, there are a few licensing rights and crossovers within the UK that aren’t quite as problematic in the US.
Licensing laws and international regulations play their part in who gets to watch what and where.
As is popular with many streaming services, one easy way of getting around all the licensing issues is to produce your own programs—and Acorn is no exception. They’re building quite a selection of Acorn Originals, which begs why such a small percentage are available on the UK platform? We can only guess it’s more licensing fun and games, especially seeing some UK library titles aren’t available in the US and vice versa. However, with StreamLocator in the mix, you can be anywhere you want to be—so it’s all up for grabs if you want it.
When you sit both websites side-by-side—UK and US and pull up the content, there are plenty of filters to organise your titles.
Here’s where you really see a difference.
The US website has masses more content than the UK version. The UK website offers a meagre 75 shows and the US 363. I think that tells us a lot about who's got the best content.
Admittedly, as noticed previously, some of the titles on the British platform don’t appear in the US catalogue and vice versa, but unless they’re the shows you really can’t do without, opting for the vastly superior-in-size selection you get from the American platform seems like a no-brainer.
You can understand how the UK service will find it trickier to land exclusive rights to programs. So many are already airing over other channels and streaming services in the country, after all. Whereas in the States, well, it’s a bit of a free for all when it comes to UK content.
We’d plump for the US platform, purely on numbers. They’ve got more titles from more providers.
