Netflikered

I was shocked, as i found myself within a hairs-breadth whisker of succumbing to the siren call of a netflix letter drop.

The list was momentarily compelling:

• a month’s free trial,
• option to cancel at the end,
• for an all i could stomach sci-fi buffet!

Thanks to the increasing dearth of decent sci-fi shows on cable, terrestial or online, how could I resist!  But before filling out the online form and sitting down to watch nothing but the best that sci-fi tv/film land had to offer, i decided the best course (or the most sensible) would be to take a peek, to have a taste of the piping hot morsels waiting for the starting pistol before launching themselves through the intercontinental interwebs at 7 megabits per second on a 24 hour basis, before being gobbled up by my unlimited (within reason) quota, so confirming the exact tide of bounteous fare netflix were poised to unleash.

My first look at the what purported to be sci-fi under the 'browse selection' tab left me somewhat open-mouthed.  Here’s a quick screenshot (showing the precise example - so a valid use of!)

as at friday 6 june 2012 at 08:15 hrs

The very first cover image was an eye opener, conan the barbarian?  When was conan part of the sci-fi (unless definitions have being put to a vote in some dim & dark distant corner of the galaxy and my invitation's been delayed by gravitational lensing, and sci-fi is still short for science fiction) genre? But then it continued, with ella enchanted, stuart little 2, to be slightly relieved by transformers (the first one); but, hocus pocus? Come on now!  But no, it carried on plummeting the pseudo depths with pirates of the caribbean: the curse of the black pearl, narnia (for f'ing sake, narnia - take a peek at the imdb site to see which categories most of the aforementioned are in!) and then finally the mist - which i haven't seen but i'm taking the imdb genre classifications as being somewhat more reliable than netflix's.  

If you’re a sci-fi aficionado then this is nothing less than the bargain basement everything else has being taken by the hordes bin, and you’ve arrived just too damned late, jerk!

There wan't a stargate nor star wars, nor anything else remotely starry offered up, except for the background on the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy cover. If this is the best that netflix can entice in their sci-fi category, then my humble moth-filled clutch purse, will remain forever closed.

I know, in the week the higgs was possibly sighted, i'm wittering on about constituent offerings of the uk netflix site, but come on people, if the little things are so radically wrong, what hope is there for anything else slightly more important like: accurate billing, or decent delivery without it freezing or stuttering a tenth of the way through? Hocus pocus in sci-fi indeed, a pox on them!