Cookie policy

The short version

Three kinds. The sign-in cookies exist only if you sign in, and the site cannot keep you signed in without them. Measurement and advertising are both optional, both off unless you say otherwise, and refusing either changes nothing about how the catalogue works.

If you never sign in and never agree to anything, this site stores nothing at all in your browser.

One standard, wherever you are

This site does not work out which country you are in and then decide how much privacy you get. It applies the stricter half of two regimes to everybody:

• From the UK and EU — nothing optional is stored until you have agreed to it. Not after the banner appears, not while you are reading it: before. Refusing is exactly as easy as agreeing, and ignoring the banner counts as refusing.
• From California — if your browser sends Global Privacy Control, that is treated as a binding instruction to opt out of any sharing for advertising, and it wins over anything saved on this page. We honour it everywhere, not only where a law names it.

Nothing here is sold. Under the California definitions, letting Google personalise advertising counts as “sharing” for cross-context behavioural advertising, which is exactly the thing the advertising choice below turns off.

Your choices

These take effect immediately and last until you change them again. You can come back to this page at any time — it is linked from the footer of every page on the site, under both “Cookies” and “Your privacy choices”.

Your current choices load with the page.

Forgetting your answer puts you back to never having been asked: everything optional stops at once, and you will be asked again. Your browser settings can also block or delete any of this, including the sign-in cookies, at the cost of being signed out.

Strictly necessary

Set only when you sign in, and there is nothing to decline here: they are what being signed in is. Refusing them would mean refusing to sign in, which you can do by not signing in. All four are first-party, all four are HttpOnly so no script can read them, and all four are SameSite=Lax and Secure.

• __Secure-authjs.session-token — the signed token that says you are signed in and which account it is. Contains an opaque account identifier and nothing else. 30 days, and cleared when you sign out.
• tv_favourites — your saved shows. The list itself lives inside this cookie rather than in an account record, signed so it cannot be edited by hand, and capped at 100 shows. 1 year.
• tv_g_state — a one-time value that protects the sign-in round trip against being forged by another site. 10 minutes, and cleared the moment sign-in completes.
• tv_g_next — remembers which page you were on when you started signing in, so you are returned to it. 10 minutes, and cleared on completion.

Clearing your cookies signs you out and erases your saved list, because the list is the cookie. Saved shows do not follow you to another browser or another device for the same reason.

Your answer to this page

One more stored value, which is not a cookie and is never sent to any server:

• tvtitles.consent.v2 — local storage, not a cookie. Holds the two answers you gave above, as {"measurement":false,"advertising":false}. It stays until you clear it or clear your browser data, and it exists so you are not asked the same question on every page.

It is kept out of cookies deliberately: a cookie is sent to the server on every single request, and a record of what you refused has no business travelling anywhere.

Measurement, and only if you agree

The container on every page is configured to run Google Analytics 4. When you agree, it sets these, both first-party and both readable by scripts on this domain:

• _ga — distinguishes one browser from another, so the counts are of people rather than of page loads. It holds a randomly generated identifier and nothing that names you. 2 years.
• _ga_F9KQH4EV9B — keeps the state of the current visit for this particular property: when it started, and whether it is still the same visit. 2 years.

Neither is set before you agree. Until you answer, and permanently if you decline, the container runs with every storage permission switched off — it writes nothing and identifies nobody.

Loading the container does mean your browser contacts Google on every page, which reveals your IP address, your browser and the page you are on, separately from anything the cookies do. That happens either way, and a content blocker is the only thing that prevents it.

Advertising, and only if you agree

This site is being set up to carry advertising through Google AdSense, which is what pays for keeping the catalogue up. A file at /ads.txt names Google as authorised to sell space here.

No advertising code runs on the page yet. The choice is here before the ads rather than after them, on purpose: the point of asking is to have your answer before anything is set, and a question put to you once the cookies are already written is not a question.

When ads do run and you have agreed, Google can set:

• __gads — first-party. Measures ads on this site and limits how often you are shown the same one. About 13 months.
• __gpi — first-party. Holds an advertising identifier used to personalise what you are shown. About 13 months.
• Google’s own third-party cookies, set on Google’s domains rather than this one — commonly IDE on doubleclick.net and NID on google.com — used to select and measure ads across sites. These are governed by Google’s cookie policy, not this one, and their durations are Google’s to set.

Agreeing to be counted is not agreeing to advertising. They are asked separately and stored separately, because consent given for one purpose is not consent for another. If you refuse advertising, ad identifiers are stripped from anything Google is sent, and any ads you eventually see are chosen without a profile of you.

Embedded video

Videos are embedded from their original host and load only when you press play, using YouTube’s youtube-nocookie.com domain. A sequence you never play opens no connection to the host and sets nothing.

• YouTube’s own cookies — set on YouTube’s domains once you press play, typically including VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE and YSC, to remember playback preferences and count views. Third-party, and governed by Google’s policy rather than this site’s.

Thumbnails are a separate matter and are not cookies: they load from Google’s image servers on page load, which reveals your IP address to Google whether or not you press anything. The privacy page covers what that means in more detail.

Nothing else

There is no other tracker, tag, pixel, beacon or fingerprinting script on this site, and no third party is given space to add one. If that ever changes, this page changes in the same release and the date at the top moves with it.