“Froot”, a new streaming service dedicated to queer and allied audiences, has launched in the UK this month. It includes dramas, documentaries and reality programmes such as Trixie Mattel: Skinny Legend, House of Drag, Boystown and more.
The new service will be available via iOS and Android apps, on a browser, and on Roku and Amazon Fire TV streaming devices.
It costs £2.99/month or £29.99/year, and there’s a free 7-days trial for new subscribers.
Content available at launch includes drag favourites such as Bob the Drag Queen: Live at Carolines and House of Drag; binge-worthy reality shows including The Whole Package, Don’t Quit Your Gay Job and Broke Straight Boys.
Educational and informative documentaries including Nubia Amplified, Translation, Three Chords and a Lie, Translation and documentary strand OUTspoken; as well as hours of movies, comedy and other inclusive content.
More content will be added every month throughout the year, including Trixie Mattel: Skinny Legend (with an exclusive UK premiere on Froot), Katya: Help Me I’m Dying, Sex & Violence and Hey Qween Season 8.
While Froot is a UK and Ireland exclusive platform for now, the people behind it are no strangers to queer programming – Froot is owned by OMG (OUTtv Media Group), the world’s largest provider and aggregator of original LGBTQ+ television content, with channels in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and the United States.
They’re joining a not-so-crowded market in the UK, with their main competition coming from Here TV, an Amazon Prime Video premium channel that’s also dedicated to queer content.
Froot – First Impressions
The streaming world is divided into two types of services – the all-encompassing ones like Netflix and Prime Video, and the niched-down ones like BritBox and, now, Froot.
Registration is easy, and there’s a free trial, but keep in mind that when you cancel the trial, you will immediately lose access to the channel – so only cancel shortly before it automatically renews, if you don’t want it to continue.
While there are certainly a lot of drag-focused shows (which is almost considered mainstream these days), gay audiences looking for more… “sexy” content won’t be disappointed either, with a documentary about straight boys who are broke (you can guess what they then do for money), and some movies with a lot of eye candy.
Generally, it does seem to gear more towards men, at least for now, as there’s very little lesbian content.
The library of content isn’t very large, but is a decent start for £2.99/month. Whether it’ll be worth it to continue the subscription, depends on the monthly updates.
But as with any subscription service, you can always take a break, cancel, and come back a few months later.
Some of the content is available in Full HD (1080), while some of the older shows are only available in SD (480). And sadly, there are no subtitles available.
All in all, Froot represents the beauty of the streaming world – where otherwise niche programmes would have struggled to locate their audience (and vice versa), it is now available to them directly at a relatively low cost. Whether the content will be good enough over time – remains to be seen.