Paramount+ Now Streaming Original Jackass TV Series

After the MTV franchise made headlines for all the wrong reasons in the early 2000s, Jackass has largely become known for being a feature film series instead of a television show. The poor video quality of the original series (it was shot on consumer grade DV tapes) plus the content of the show and music clearances made the show a near impossibility to get on a streaming service but Paramount+ has defied the odds and brought much of the original show to its subscribers. This new collection of the original TV series joins all of the Jackass movies, and the “.5” films, on the streamer.

What’s abundantly clear from the jump however is that these aren’t the original episodes that aired on MTV in the early 2000s but new cuts that combine several episodes into one new edit, with some segments even repeating (for instance “Bam Kicking His Dad’s Ass All Day” appears in at least two episodes). Comparing the listings from the original episodes to what’s present on Paramount+ confirms this, as each of the “episodes” contains material from various episodes as well as skits from “The Lost Tapes” DVD release with some of the episodes featuring content from the original Jackass TV series box-set in the same order. In addition some of these new compilations also include all-new music under the segments as they use material that wasn’t even released when the original Jackass aired. Each episode also includes a new warning on Paramount+ which can be found below.

“Within two weeks, it was officially the highest ratings MTV had ever had, outside of VMAs or anything,” Jackass star and stunt performer Steve-O recalled to The Hollywood Reporter in a recent Oral History of the series. “It shattered all their records and presumably with less of a budget than they were used to. And they were running reruns at 5 p.m. It was crazy. By the time the second season was underway, maybe a few weeks in, little kids were showing up in hospitals all over the place. Because they were inspired to be doing stunts on their own. And this scared the sh-t out of MTV. Then Joe Lieberman was lobbying against MTV. There wasn’t ever an actual big lawsuit, but there was just the fear of one, and MTV was in this position of, ‘Well, f-ck, this is our biggest profit margin we’ve ever had, but there’s all this liability.’ So their reaction was to start not approving sh-t for us to film.”

You can sign up for Paramount+ and stream a lot of Jackass by clicking here.