Paramount Plus is not worth your hard-earned money

Rikki Ding reviews.

Just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be another streaming service in Australia, another conglomerate reminds you that they own a big chunk of your childhood, and now they want you to pay them to relive it.

In the digital era where every broadcaster and online superstore wants a piece of that lucrative streaming market, Australian consumers face an unprecedented number of options for subscription video on demand (SVOD) services.

Now, add Paramount+ to that list. Having previously dipped their toe in this competitive market with underwhelming success, American media behemoth ViacomCBS’ latest SVOD offering promises a “mountain of entertainment”. At $8.99 per month, Paramount+ significantly undercuts most of its competition. But does the service justify its existence in a highly competitive subscription video market?

Original content plays a significant role in keeping a streaming service above its competition, and Netflix’s mastery of original productions is largely what has kept it atop the streaming throne. Although Paramount+ has announced a slate of original content heading to the service in the coming year, its “Originals and Exclusives” section feels void and empty at launch, featuring a collection of 20 odd shows and a single movie.

The launch of Paramount+ is headlined by its original film Infinite, a big-budget sci-fi blockbuster with a forgettable plot that features every cliché imaginable, right down to the hero’s voiceover quote-reading and the antagonist’s ‘I’m a villain’ accent. With only a 16% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, if this plot-hole galore is any indicator of what’s to come for the streaming platform, then the possibilities for disappointment truly are infinite.

While the platform’s small selection of original shows is far from unwatchable and even contains a couple of notable titles (such as the CBS hit Why Women Kill), subscribers probably won’t want to fork out their hard-earned cash for the exclusive content alone.

Even among the original series currently on the platform, several are reboots or spin-offs of classic shows – such as Spongebob Squarepants prequel series Kamp Koral, which follows the wacky adventures of everyone’s beloved sponge and his ocean friends as kids at a summer camp. Featuring a distracting new 3D animation style, Kamp Koral provides mindless fun for today’s easy-to-please crowd of fidget-spinning kids, but ultimately fails to stand out from the sea of similar children’s programming available on other platforms.

The company is clearly reluctant to let go of its past glories, as they have invested heavily into reviving a whole line-up of classic shows including Frasier, iCarly and The Fairly Oddparents to sell you that sweet, and (more importantly) profitable, nostalgia.

Despite flaunting the notable brands owned by the media giant – including Paramount, Showtime, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, among others – the company failed to secure exclusive streaming arrangements for much of its own content, resulting in Paramount+ having to share custody of the company’s titles with rival services.

For example, the complete Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra collections live simultaneously on Paramount+ and Netflix, the latter of which is already part of most households. More surprisingly, most Showtime titles are absent from the platform altogether, and are instead scattered across Netflix and Stan.

The platform’s small library of movies is also not much to write home about. Apart from a respectable collection of popular franchises like Harry Potter and some cult classics, the “Movies” tab is mostly populated by popcorn flicks and films one might ‘Paramount+ and chill’ to.

On top of this, the streaming service itself also appears to be rushed in development. Although most major media devices are supported (with the notable lack of console support), the app is missing basic features such as multiple profiles, watchlists or intro-skipping, which is simply unacceptable for a service launched in 2021.

As a latecomer in a market already dominated by entertainment powerhouses, Paramount+ must make extra efforts to one-up its competition and earn a place in the consumer’s wallet. But even with a highly competitive price, the streaming service’s current library of content is simply too small to justify a regular spot in most subscription lists.

If, however, you’ve been meaning to catch up on that one show that’s only on Paramount+, or you’re wondering what your childhood pals from iCarly have been up to; then at least you know where to go – just make sure you have an extra nine bucks to spare.