Icy roads this morning and a few snowflakes falling from the sky. For me, it's bike turbo weather and I've fired up the PC to watch some boxsets whilst pedalling.
In the olden days I'd use DVDs, but for years I've been Netflixed-up which is altogether more convenient.
Except for one thing.
VBS - Vanishing Boxset Syndrome.
It's happened to me a few of times now. The first was "Ashes-to-Ashes", the retro cop series involving time travelling/comas from the 21st Century back to the 1980s. There I was at the end of Season 2, with Season 3 cued-up to watch when the whole Netflix box-set turned to ash.
Back in the day, I watched Weeds across three delivery channels, the first parts on Netflix, then some on iTunes and I finally had to buy the American region code last two series on DVD. Its an excuse to play the Little Boxes opening again, the version below by Elvis Costello.
The latest boxset to disappear is Justified, which I'd been watching on Netflix. I'd just got to the disarming ending of Series 3 and had Series 4 wound past the start as my next viewing, when it suddenly disappeared during the opening parachute flashback sequence. I've looked around and it's now on Amazon Prime, so I can recover from this unexpected blip. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Justified is now on Sky, but whether it's all five series remains to be checked.
It makes me wonder what is going on in the smoke-filled back rooms of the various channel executives? I suppose if I read the small print somewhere it will tell me when these various series will expire, but they don't make much of this when they first advertise the availability of new materials.
Maybe they want me to watch them even faster. I'll need more icy weather and longer pedalling sessions for that to work.
