Tubi is completely baffling but very compelling.Credit:Margaret Gordon
After my colleagues watchedSBS On Demand and thenABC iview for a week,I volunteered to do Tubi. If you haven’t heard of it,it is a free streaming service that you can install as an app on your TV or watch in your browser.
Will it be home to some of the most wretched scum in television and film history? Yes. Is there also some gold to find? We’re about to find out.
What does it offer?
Thanks to being owned by Fox,it contains large collections of faith-based content from Fox Soul and what it calls “black independent cinema”. Tubi also has a solid reality TV library,lots of old movies,and a surprising number of films you’ve never heard of that inexplicably star big-name actors.
If you create an account it says it will recommend you things to watch and allow you to jump back into a show you’re halfway through watching. I didn’t bother. I wanted the full,unadulterated Tubi experience. No strings attached.
First impressions
Other streaming services might prioritise their own content but not Tubi. It launches you straight into a wild rush of every type of show and film you never knew existed. The first thing I decided to watch was a 2006 film calledLonely Hearts,with the kind of A-list cast that makes you wonder why you’d never heard of it. John Travolta and James Gandolfini play hardbitten cops in post-WWII New York,on the trail of Salma Hayek and Jared Leto’s murderous con couple. Laura Dern is there,Scott Caan,a bunch of character actors – this should work! It turns out this film was not a hit because even the big names can’t fix poor direction,editing and writing. But it did give me some insight into how hard it is to make something good.