I hope you weren't mid-way through any of Paramount Plus' slate of British thrillers, because in an unexpected move, the Paramount-owned streamer has just wiped five such original TV shows off the face of the Earth.
These shows, all original productions and all released in the last five months, have been removed from Paramount Plus in the last few days, as per Deadline. While all the shows are British, they've been removed from Paramount Plus globally.
The Killing Kind (September) The Burning Girls (October) One Night (November) The Doll Factory (November) The Serial Killer's Wife (December)
You can find on the right a full list of the TV shows removed, as well as the date they premiered on the streaming service. In the case of The Serial Killer's Wife, the show had less than eight weeks live before its removal.
At the time of writing, there's no word on when you'll be able to watch any of these shows again — that's why I said I hope you weren't halfway through any of them!
However, we could see them crop up somewhere else, as there's precedent for media companies to remove shows from their paid streaming services and re-upload them to their free ones. Paramount owns Pluto TV, which we rank as one of the best free streaming services, and in the UK it also owns Channel 5 which sometimes shows Paramount Plus shows.
This removal news may motivate people who were waiting to watch a certain Paramount Plus show, especially Sexy Beast, a new British crime thriller that was just added.
According to Deadline, Paramount's cull of these British thriller shows is part of a re-focus, in which the media giant will double down on its big-budget Hollywood roots. The company is known for blockbusters like Transformers, Dungeons & Dragons, Scream and Mission: Impossible, with the first half of 2024 bringing A Quiet Place: Day One, Transformers One and Bob Marley: One Love (why all the "one'" names, Paramount?).
Paramount itself hasn't commented on the mass deletion of British thrillers — in fact, it didn't tell anyone it was happening, with fans left to notice the absences themselves. However, streamers removing their own shows from their platform is nothing new, with Netflix and Disney Plus some of the streamers that have cleaned ship of certain originals for various reasons.
