British-TV bingers can crack into Acorn Mike Snider
Apple TV’s free trial opens up international possibilities
Apple TV’s app gallery has gained some British flair.
Acorn TV, the streaming home of U.K. television series such as Agatha Christie’s Poirot, recently landed in Apple TV’s App Store. The service, launched five years ago on Acorn.TV for computers, is also available on Apple iPads and iPhones as well as Roku devices and Samsung Smart TVs.
Now is a good time to explore Acorn TV — there’s a 30-day free trial; after that it’s $6.99 monthly or $69.99 annually. For British-TV binge-watchers, there’s the complete Poirot series starring David Suchet, including the final season and Emmy-nominated last episode, “Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case.” New arrivals include Liberty
of London, a reality TV series about a venerable department store, and British crime drama
Suspects (Series 1, Feb. 22; Series 2, Feb. 29), which has an original twist of actors improvising their lines.
Acorn TV has a growing international flavor, too. Last month, the service added the third season finale of Australian series A
Place to Call Home — deemed “Australia’s sexiest soap opera” by Entertainment Weekly — and began weekly episode premieres of Canadian police drama 19-2, nominated for a dozen Canadian Screen Awards.
Next month marks the arrival of two new series: Janet King, an eight-episode Australian import starring Marta Dusseldorp ( A
Place Called Home) as a prosecutor (episode 1 hits March 14) and Very British Problems (March 28), a comedy sketch series that tackles British life with appearances from James Corden ( The Late Late Show), Jimmy Akingbola ( Arrow) and Rich Hall ( Saturday Night Live).
Also among Acorn TV’s thousands of hours are nearly 200 series with complete collections of Agatha Christie’s Marple,
Prime Suspect (Helen Mirren), Brideshead Revisited, Cadfael (Derek Jacobi), Doc Martin,
Foyle’s War and Upstairs Downstairs.
Acorn TV got an assist from another entertainment app company, Qello. “It’s been a pleasure working with Qello to design cutting-edge apps that look fantastic, work flawlessly, and will help our users discover shows they’ll love,” said Acorn TV’s general manager Matthew Graham in a statement.
“We’re excited for the millions of Apple TV owners to now have easy access to (our) deep library of curated, high-quality international programs.”