Bye Shomi, our time was fleeting
The beauty of Shomi has always been its alternative offering. Yes, it offers subscribers an alternative to Netflix and Crave in that it has the rights to shows that its two competitors do not, but it also offers alternative content: programs and movies that do not plod the well worn path to mainstream popularity, but outright challenge it, and in the process, challenge viewers.
Forget bolstering frontrunners like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, Shomi has me covered with shows like Transparent, Mr. Robot and Catastrophe. While Netflix has played my long-suffering but dutiful husband, Shomi quickly became my much younger sidepiece, eagerly waiting and ready to go. It was there when I tired of Netflix and its strange categories ( no, I don’t want to watch Visually Striking German Dramas With A Strong Female Lead right now), when I wanted to try something new, rarer, darker.
So when the joint venture between Rogers and Shaw announced Monday that it would be closing down in November after operating fewer than two years, my heart sank. This was a streaming service that got me. It understood what I wanted sometimes better than I did.
In their press statement, Melani Griffith, Rogers senior vice president of content, said, “We tried something new, and customers who used Shomi loved it. It’s like a great cult favourite with a fantastic core audience that unfortunately just isn’t big enough to be renewed for another season.”
In other words, Shomi is an underdog. That might seems a strange label to place on a venture owned and operate by the largest communications corporation in the country, but Griffith’s analogy will ring true to anyone who used the service. Shomi roots for those series and movies just like it, always on the edge of cancellation, kept alive by cult fans and, therefore, remaining a beacon to all the other underdogs out there. I see you, Shomi.
I can marathon Outlander. I caught up on Jane the Virgin last summer, and now when I recommend UnReal and The Americans to a stranger, I can actually tell them where they can find episodes. Well, could tell them.
I could scratch my CW itch on the down low and stream Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill while in the comfort of my Snuggie. I could go through many a Kleenex while watching my favourite, American Beauty, before hastily curing my sadness hangover with both The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2.
So, this coming weekend, when I binge-watch the latest season of Transparent on shomi and rewatch Difficult People for the 10th time, I will bid it and its admittedly irritating, punny ads adieu.
I will once again return to my old flame, Netflix, longing for the days when I could grab a drink after hours and steal a night away with Shomi; its soft purple interface glowing, inviting me to choose between a hundred different black comedies and dark dramas I can’t find anywhere else. Goodbye, Shomi. It was fun while it very briefly lasted.