I subscribe to more streaming platforms than I am willing to name, partly because this is my job and partly because cancellation menus are designed by people who studied hostage negotiation. On most evenings, I spend longer choosing than watching. Rows slide past: “Because you watched,” “Top ten,” “Continue watching,” “Critically acclaimed,” and the sinister “We think you’ll love.” After twenty minutes I return to a show I have already seen, defeated by abundance.
This is not a shortage of good work. Netflix’s public engagement reporting illustrates the vast global volume being consumed, while industry coverage from outlets such as Deadline’s streaming desk tracks a churn of commissions, renewals and cancellations too large for any ordinary viewer to process. India adds its own stack of Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali and international catalogues. We have access previous generations could barely imagine. Why, then, does choosing feel like unpaid administration?
The interface is not a curator
Platforms pretend recommendation systems are neutral servants learning our taste. In practice, the interface also learns the platform’s commercial priorities. New originals receive giant banners. Licensed films disappear into poorly labelled rows. A title may be recommended not because it is the best match but because the service needs its expensive commission to perform. The algorithm is a shop assistant paid by the shelf.
I do not object to promotion. I object to promotion masquerading as personal understanding. If I watch one murder mystery, the service decides I yearn for corpses indefinitely. If my niece uses the television profile once, animated animals occupy my screen for months. Human taste is contextual, social and moody. Sometimes I want a demanding Korean drama; sometimes I want Shah Rukh Khan extending his arms while physics takes leave. A behavioural trail cannot fully describe that difference.
Old-fashioned curation had limitations and gatekeepers, but it supplied reasons. A critic, video-store owner or festival programmer could tell you why two works belonged together. Streaming rows offer resemblance without argument: women in red dresses, tense male faces, films around ninety minutes. The platforms should employ visible curators who build seasonal collections with signed notes. Let me follow a person’s taste and disagree with it. Accountability is more interesting than “97 per cent match.”
Indian catalogues particularly need better metadata. Language tags are inconsistent, subtitles vary in quality and older films often arrive in miserable prints. Credits can be incomplete. Search may fail unless the title is typed in the platform’s preferred transliteration. This is not glamorous work, but libraries are judged by cataloguing as well as acquisition. A vault with a broken index is not abundance.
Eight episodes where four would do
The streaming era promised freedom from broadcast schedules. It then created its own formula: six to ten episodes, each ending with an engineered hook, even when the story contains the dramatic material of a feature film. Characters repeat information, subplots loiter and mysteries refuse to answer a simple question because the platform needs another hour of engagement.
I have watched excellent slow television. Duration is not the enemy; shapelessness is. A series such as The Diplomat can use episodic time to let alliances and marriages shift by degrees. Many lesser shows merely delay. Their creators confuse withholding with suspense and trauma with characterisation. Every protagonist receives a childhood wound, usually revealed in a blue-grey flashback, as though adulthood cannot contain an original motive.
Indian crime streaming suffers especially from prestige mimicry. Give the hero stubble, reduce the lighting, add profanity and photograph a small town from a drone: seriousness achieved. The first wave felt liberating because it escaped television censorship and film-star economics. The copyists then converted liberation into another house style. Grit became a colour grade.
Comedies, romances and family dramas deserve more space. Not “wholesome content,” a phrase that sounds medicinal, but sharp work about ordinary social life. India is undergoing vast changes in work, marriage, migration, language and class. One should not need a serial killer to explore them. Some of our best streaming stories have understood this; commissioning patterns keep returning to guns because danger travels easily in a trailer.
The vanishing library
Physical media had clutter, but a disc on my shelf did not disappear because two corporations renegotiated territorial rights. Streaming taught audiences to treat access as ownership and then quietly removed titles. A film saved to a watchlist can vanish without a meaningful warning. Entire services merge or rebrand; subscriptions move; bundles change; the viewer is expected to track corporate genealogy like a royal historian.
Platforms should publish expiry dates prominently at least a month in advance. They should maintain accessible lists of additions and removals, not hide them in publicity emails. Purchased digital titles need stronger consumer protections. If a company uses the word “buy,” access should not depend indefinitely on a licensing arrangement the buyer cannot inspect.
Preservation is the larger concern. Indian cinema has already lost or damaged vast portions of its history. Streaming could support restoration and access, but commercial platforms naturally prioritise titles likely to generate immediate viewing. Public institutions, archives and private rights-holders need partnerships that make restored films available beyond occasional festival screenings. The market cannot preserve everything because preservation is a duty, not merely a demand signal.
I would happily pay for a well-designed Indian classics service with reliable prints, subtitles, scholarly introductions and transparent rights. What I do not need is another general platform carrying seven heavily advertised originals and a cupboard of neglected films encoded from questionable masters.
My modest viewer’s rebellion
I now rotate subscriptions. One or two platforms stay active; the rest are cancelled until a specific work justifies returning. This is not heroic consumer activism. It is household tidiness. Yet the practice has improved my viewing because scarcity restores intention. I keep a short list compiled from friends, critics and festivals instead of opening six apps and hoping an algorithm diagnoses my mood.
The industry fears churn, but it should ask why loyalty has become irrational. No platform consistently offers enough distinctive work to deserve permanent residence in every home. Bundles disguise the problem by making cancellation inconvenient. Better libraries, meaningful curation and confidence in shorter, finished stories would earn loyalty more honestly.
I still love streaming. It has allowed Indian viewers to cross languages, encounter world cinema and watch daring series without waiting for a distributor’s permission. I would not trade that access for the old gatekeeping system. But gratitude should not require pretending the present model is mature.
Choice becomes freedom only when people can understand and navigate it. Otherwise it is a warehouse with autoplay. My evening is not an engagement metric, and my exhaustion is not proof of a successful catalogue. Give me fewer dishonest recommendations, better information and stories that end when they are finished. I promise to do the difficult remaining work: press play.
