
#Best music prodigy pbs movies series#
In Wyoming, there are series on state politics, Wyoming outdoors culture, and life on the Wind River Reservation. region, many of the non-marquee series focus on the local food scene and the cultural history of the District. Navigate to any station website, and you will see that the spread of shows and specials offered-especially those of the more local or community-based variety-will differ. Now, the fact that Passport exists as a benefit of individual station membership makes a guide like this a bit tricky. So here I am, aided by local PBS member stations across the country, ready to guide you through one more streaming service. Or, at least, all of them that PBS has the streaming rights to at any given moment. And I love you: I want you to have all of them. Plus, while Prime and Netflix have most of the PBS properties you might be looking for, they don’t have all of them. Your mileage may vary, but as much as I love the bold experimentation the deep coffers of Amazon and Netflix allow for, any time I’m given the opportunity to hold their total takeover of our private lives at bay, I’m going to seize it. Better yet, flip that around: Your sustaining membership to a force for education and possibility in your own community comes with the benefit of access to Passport’s streaming service. And your subscription to Passport, generally around $5/month (the rate varies by region), doubles as a sustaining membership to your local public station. PBS, which exists as a central organization but survives on the strength of the national network of local public television stations, is only about community. Two subscriptions… to two astronomically gargantuan corporations whose every real interest is in profit, not in community. So, that’s two subscriptions that you are probably already paying for.

For those few titles you can’t find it on Prime- Bletchley Circle, The Great British Baking Show, Happy Valley-Netflix has often picked up the slack. Now, if you’re a fan of PBS who also has an Amazon Prime account, you’re reading this thinking, “Prime Video already has just about everything PBS has ever aired-why in the world would I pay for what would basically amount to a duplicate subscription fee?” And sure, fair point: Like everything else in the present moment, Amazon has cornered the market on most things PBS. You want to finally, finally binge Downton Abbey, now that any random fan you meet on the street is unlikely to accost you for being behind the zeitgeist? Passport has your back! You want to zone out to Nature while you gather your strength for another day of fighting for a more just society? Passport’s on it.

You want to catch up on all those critically acclaimed period piece mini-series that came and went before you found time to watch them? Passport’s got you. It’s just, all the channels surrounding PBS are so loud and shiny and demanding, and the muscle memory of clicking over to all the content-flush streamers on my Roku so strong, that even broadcasting over three channels, PBS can hardly get a thoughtful word in edgewise-and that’s not even taking mobile watching into consideration.Įnter Passport, PBS’ very own subscription streaming platform service, which makes it as easy to access tens of thousands of hours of PBS programming on any smart TV, computer or mobile device as it is to queue up the next season of whatever severely underlit Marvel show. Not just because Masterpiece consistently mounts the most soothing period fare (and Masterpiece Mystery, the best reason to fondly remember Edward Gorey), or because Ken Burns is always dependable for a good dozen hours of cultural and historical edification, or because The Great British Baking Show has become the one show you can for sure turn on with any family member, at any time, for something safe to marvel over, but because media funded by the public and beholden to no commercial-or worse, secret-interests is desperately necessary for our democracy to survive. (Hello, WETA, WMPT, and WHUT!) Plus, I really like PBS. It is doubly ludicrous when you consider that the metro region I live in is served by not one, not two, but three PBS stations.


This is ludicrous, as I am a person whose four years at her liberal arts college were spent studying Russian and French literature and who now writes professionally about television PBS should be my siren song. I have a confession: I rarely remember, when turning on the television, that PBS is an option.
