Online television offers a truly dizzying array of choices. Viewers of services like Hulu and Netflix, as well as customers of iTunes and Amazon Digital Services, can stream, rent or purchase episodes of television shows from every era.
But not every show that ever aired is legally available online. Surprisingly, there are plenty of high-profile shows that are not available for online consumption – not even for purchase. (All shows listed are on DVD tho.) For a variety of reasons, there are some seriously popular (or once-popular) shows that you just can't find online.
Here's my list of the concluded shows that were popular in their day and are not currently available online in any streaming form. DVD collections do not count, and the show doesn't have to be free online: shows on HBO Go are regarded as online, even if you have to subscribe to HBO to get them. (I'm looking at you, Sopranos.) And because legal is the watchword here, I am not going to count the ways you can download copies of episodes with BitTorrent or watch them on YouTube.
Note that the availability of online shows is constantly shifting.The Cosby Show was once on Netflix, then off, and now is on Hulu Plus. Nor is this list complete: you may have your own favorites that you can't find online.
1. Batman
Thanks to the DC Comics/Warner Brothers money machine, you can view Batman animated series episodes practically anywhere on the Internet. But the original 1966-1968 classic show starring Adam West and Burt Ward is not showing online at any Bat-time or any Bat-channel. For comic-book aficionados, this is both bad (it's Batman!) and good (the Batusi? Really?). But at the end of the day, who wouldn't want to relive the harrowing cliff-hangers we saw as kids while also catching the barely disguised innuendo we can detect as adults?
3. The Golden Girls
In the days when comedy shows reigned supreme, this one showed viewers that old could mean funny. For seven seasons, from 1985-1992, this NBC show featuring four sharp women was acerbic enough keep even younger audiences interested. But older audiences flocked to this show, and might again if it was more widely distributed online.
4. The Honeymooners
"To the moon, Alice!" Or at least to the nearest IP address, please. But alas, the comedic genius of Jackie Gleason and an incredible cast of comedy veterans is not to be found online now. Popular from 1953-1956, and then even more when it was revived as a part of a variety show from 1966-1970 (with sporadic episodes throughout the '70s), this comedy about working-class couples remains timeless. (I don't remember much about this show, but wasn't the husband verbally abusive? I can see why no one would want to stream that.)
6. M*A*S*H
One of the longest-running shows on television, this medical procedural/comedy/war series ran for 11 seasons on CBS, bringing the Korean War into our homes every Monday night. You wouldn't think a show about a medical unit in a proxy war in Asia would be a hit so soon after the actual Vietnam War, but it was. The chemistry of the cast and the razor-sharp writing kept this show alive far longer than the conflict in which it was set. I'd like my kids to see this one.
8. The Six Million Dollar Man
You can rebuild him. You can make him better than he was before. Faster. Stronger. But if you want to actually watch Lee Majors as the world's first bionic man online? Forget it, the show's locked up tighter than the OSI. Okay, so the show doesn't rank up there with the greats, but it was pretty decent sci-fi that managed to bring super-heroics to the screen and show us a surprisingly realistic future of bionics. Even if they always did run in slow motion.
Rest at the source. (FIXED)
Found this and thought it was interesting. A few of these I've wanted to see streaming, but many of them you can't find the whole series online, and this list was being good by only mentioning legal streaming.