How to find Amy Schumer and other 'erased' Paramount+ Originals
Plus: Disney Plus, The Tourist, and more!
This article covers a whole bunch of streaming-related things that don’t fit neatly into one topic, including the availability of Inside Amy Schumer on Amazon, the reissuing of removed Paramount Plus originals in other formats, and weird things I’ve noticed about the international distribution of Streaming Originals.
In addition to Paramount, Disney+ and HBO Max will be discussed.
ContentsAmy Schumer on Amazon
The first time I heard about Inside Amy Schumer was when I read a Deadline article earlier this Summer about it being the latest victim of the Streaming Purge, with the Paramount Plus streaming service following in the footsteps of HBO Max.
From what little I’ve seen, Schumer is a sketch comedy series following the title character that had ended several years prior to being revived for a new season specifically for Paramount+, which is why it was branded as a “Paramount+ Original“. Deadline used it as the headliner for its article, listing a number of other Originals such as From Cradle to Stage and Tell Me a Story. Naturally, a lot of other sites picked up the news about the removal. And the way it was reported, you’d think Amy Schumer had vanished into the digital ether, never to be seen again.
Well, as I was working on my previous article about erased streaming originals, I made a couple of interesting discoveries. For one thing, most of the aforementioned Originals including Schumer are available in full on physical or digital home video.
For another, Inside Amy Schumer is actually STILL available for streaming on Paramount Plus… if you’re subscribed to the Amazon Prime Video Channel version of it.* Did you even know that rather than go to a separate app or website to sign up for Paramount Plus, HBO Max and other streamers, you can do so via Amazon? It occurs through a feature of Prime Video called Amazon Channels.
“This service allows Prime subscribers to subscribe to a number of outside rival subscription products, with Amazon taking a fee off the top.”
Source: Rick Ellis, All Your Screens
In theory, you should receive access to all of the Streaming Service’s content within Amazon’s interface. However, in practice, this is not necessarily the case. Inside Amy Schumer was indeed removed from the main version of Paramount Plus and cannot be accessed on the platform. But it has not been removed from the Amazon version, resulting in a discrepancy between the offerings.
So, if you subscribe via Amazon to Paramount Plus, you can see all 5 seasons of Schumer, including the streaming-exclusive fifth season.*
*This comes with a caveat, however - unlike the first four, the fifth season is not there in its entirety. The first two episodes of S5 are missing, but the latter three are still accessible. Still, you can purchase all the episodes via Amazon or Apple Digital Video.
How could this happen and what does it mean? I can only offer a couple theories:
This is a simple mistake and Paramount hasn’t pulled these from the Amazon Version because it hasn’t noticed that they are still there.
There are nuances or provisions in the licensing agreements between Paramount Plus and Amazon that allows this show to remain there for a while longer. At some point, the Amazon channel license will expire and it’ll be removed.
Whatever the actual reason is, the availability of Schumer here illustrates that there can be differences in the content offerings between the main and Amazon versions of the same streaming platform. It’s not within my power to make an in-depth comparison, but the fact that the Amazon Version can have individual shows or episodes that the main version doesn’t suggests that the opposite can be true as well.
UPDATE - August 2024Inside Amy Schumer has been covertly available in its entirety on Hulu since at least mid-April of 2024. This in turn means one can now access it via the Hulu hub on Disney Plus as well. This doesn’t, however, appear to have been reported anywhere by mainstream media entertainment outlets, such as Deadline or Variety.
I’ve written more about this here.
Removed Paramount Plus Originals Available In Other Formats
Now, as I’ve said earlier, Schumer is actually one of several removed Paramount Plus Originals that were made available outside of streaming, a fact that was largely underreported when news broke of the removals earlier this Summer. So, I’ve compiled a Table of the Removed Originals and their alternate availability.*
*Again, I should note that I’ve strived to make the information in these tables as accurate as possible but there is always the possibility that some details may have been overlooked. If I later locate any errors, I will make the necessary corrections.