How to watch Parks and Recreation in the US, UK and abroad
Here’s how to watch all seven seasons of Parks and Recreation, wherever you are in the world
First premiering in 2009, Parks and Recreation follows Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) and the rest of the Pawnee Parks and Recreation department as they try to bust through layers of bureaucracy to get a new park built on an abandoned construction site.
When town official Leslie meets disgruntled Pawnee resident Ann Perkins –who’s sick of an unsightly construction sight outside her home – she makes a promise to build a park on the site, even if it means doing it herself.
The Emmy-nominated sitcom has a huge fan-base and is praised both for its inspiring and positive story, as well as its incredibly funny cast. It’s hard not to fall in love with the show.
As with any good TV series, it has led to many of its cast members becoming regular household names, including Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones and Aziz Ansari.
Its biggest beneficiary, however, is probably Chris Pratt who has now risen to prominence as a lead actor in the Jurassic Park reboots and the Guardians of the Galaxy/Avengers franchise.
How to watch Parks and Recreation in the UK: Amazon Prime
If you live in the UK and want to get stuck into Parks and Recreation now, you can watch series 1-7 on Amazon Prime Video. There are two ways to get this if you live in the UK. The first is to subscribe to Amazon Prime.
Amazon Prime offers thousands of benefits, including one-day delivery on thousands of products, unlimited music streaming and photos storage and heavily-discounted products throughout the year, especially on days like the Prime Day and November’s Black Friday.
READ NEXT: What you get with Amazon Prime
You have three options when subscribing to Amazon Prime. The cheapest way to get all the aforementioned benefits is to subscribe to Amazon Prime for an entire year upfront, which will cost you £79 a year.
The second option is a recurring monthly plan, which costs £7.99 a month. Finally, there’s the Prime Video Monthly plan. This costs £5.99 a month and only gives you access to Amazon Prime Video content – including all seven seasons of Parks and Recreation.
All three options include a 30-day trial for new members, so you can test the service until your heart’s content. If you choose to cancel any of the three options before your trial expires, you won’t be charged a penny.
Alternatively, you can buy the complete boxset of Parks and Recreation online. At the moment it’s £64.99 for all seven seasons and buying them on DVD means you get to keep them forever and watch them in your own time.
You can never be sure how long Amazon Prime Video will have a third-party series for, so this is the only guaranteed way to ensure that you can enjoy the series for years to come.
How to watch Parks and Recreation in the US: Netflix
US residents will be happy to know that all seven seasons of Parks and Recreation is currently available to stream on American Netflix.
Netflix lets you stream a huge range of movies and TV shows but the American behemoth needs to comply with the different licensing laws that are applicable to each country.
The US benefits the most from this, which often means it has TV shows and movies that no other Netflix library has.
While some franchises (like Harry Potter) are only restricted to certain Netflix libraries in the world, there are others (like Parks and Recreation) that are only available on American Netflix.
READ NEXT: How to watch US Netflix abroad
How to watch Parks and Recreation abroad: use a VPN
If you want to watch Parks and Recreation abroad, then your only hope to access Amazon Prime UK and American Netflix is to use a VPN, short for ‘virtual private network’. A VPN is a piece of software that tricks your device into thinking it’s in a different country to the one it actually is by changing its IP address.
In an ideal world you wouldn’t need this but both Netflix and Amazon Prime geo-block their content, meaning you won’t be able to access those websites once you’re outside the country. Using a VPN is the only surefire way to circumvent these georestrictions.
So if you want to access Amazon Prime UK or American Netflix content when you’re abroad, you’ll first need to download and install a VPN. Once you’ve done this, simply choose another country – in this case – the UK or US. Now even if you’re halfway across the world, you’ll be able to catch up on Parks and Recreation from the very beginning, or indeed, from where you were last watching it.
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