Originally Posted by Prism99

For specific shows, Google to see if they are currently being offered by any of the channels. I Googled Maigret and it is not currently available on Amazon; however, it might become available in the future. Acorn showed it as being available for purchase as a DVD set, but not being streamed on their channel.

Offerings on the channels change periodically, as the channels negotiate contracts all the time. They might purchase the rights to a series for a year and have to drop it when their contract runs out. Some contracts are exclusive, some are not.

We enjoyed Lord & Master, a German detective series with subtitles, on Acorn and I think it is still there. We have watched other foreign series with subtitles from a variety of countries with on Netflix, and also I think on Amazon. Offhand I can remember a French detective series and at least one Scandinavian detective series.

PBS now has its own subscription channel. You should check them out too.

We like Roku. What you might want to do is buy a Roku, set it up, and experiment. Most pay channels offer a free trial period and you can cancel if you don't like the offerings. Acorn is very affordable at $5/month. I would not recommend Sling, based on its price and the poor reviews I have seen for it. If you have Amazon prime, they have quite a few free movies and series (although most of them are not my favorites) for prime members, so no cost to add that to Roku. Netflix is definitely worthwhile, I think about $10/month. I have held off on subscribing to PBS, which I think is fairly new.

If you have cable tv, some cable companies give you certain streaming channels free. We dropped our cable tv from our internet provider, but because we still use their broadband they gave us a free app that provides us with our local tv channels on Roku.

Hope this isn't too confusing.

Edit: Should mention we added a subscription to Great Courses and it is terrific for us. Dh loves science and math, so he can watch as many different lectures as he wants without running out. They also offer many other courses on just about every subject imaginable, from Indian cooking to Tai Chi. They offer a one-month free trial to see if you like it.