NetFlix in the UK – going to be any good?

So, I know it’s early days, but NetFlix has just opened it’s doors in the UK and quite frankly, I thought they would have had a better line up to open with.

For the most part, the TV selection falls into four categories – old stuff of varying quality (Cracker, Fawlty Towers, 12 episodes of Men Behaving Badly), huge amounts of Kids TV and Animated stuff (Moschops, Thomas and Friends, X-Men), TV comedy shows like Saturday Night Live and a small, tiny amount of ‘new’ stuff (Dollhouse).

The movies don’t fare much better.  It’s not easy to list every movie, but here are the 2010-2011 movies on Netflix in various categories (this is every movie the interface returns, in that category for that year).

Action & Adventure 2010 & 2011

  • Blitz
  • Drive Angry
  • Delhi Belly
  • Thor: Tales of Asgard
  • Woochi
  • Shaolin
  • Red Hill
  • Fists of Rage
  • The Expendables
  • Little Big Soldier
  • Locked Down
  • Gotti the Mob Boss
  • Jackie Chan and the Kung Fu Kid
  • 71: Into the Fire
  • Nude Nuns With Big Guns
  • Rakht Charitra
  • Special Ops
  • Tees Maar Khan

Sci-Fi & Fantasy 2010 & 2011

  • Dead Space: Aftermath
  • Woochi
  • Area 51
  • Ticking Clock
  • The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
  • Hunter Prey

Thrillers 2010 & 2011

  • Blitz
  • Ticking Clock
  • Red Hill
  • Buried
  • My Soul to Take
  • The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
  • Winter in Wartime
  • Stone
  • Pimp
  • Raajneeti
  • House Under Siege

Maybe I’m missing something?  I mean, Blitz shows up on the main page which is a 2011 movie, but I can’t get it to show up on the basic lists, so perhaps I am missing something, but it still looks like a pretty lame opening gambit from NetFlix.   Unless they significantly improve the content very quickly and provide a more comprehensive way of listing movies (such as the simple LoveFilm A-Z view), I’ll be hard pushed to justify signing up.

Update: Aha, typically, after posting this I worked out what I was doing wrong.  You have to tell it to list things you’ve already seen in the summary lists.  I’ve added some items into the list, in italics, where they were missing first time.