What to watch tonight, in the time you actually have

Because it leaves time on the table more often than not. With the list this page starts with - three films of 1h40, 1h35 and 1h25 and three episodes of 42 minutes - and three hours to spend, picking the longest first gets you the 1h40 film and one episode, which is 2h22, and then nothing else fits. Thirty eight minutes gone.

The two films of 1h35 and 1h25 add up to exactly three hours. Same list, same evening, nothing wasted.

Tested on twenty thousand random lists: picking the longest first wastes time in 50.7 percent of them, and the worst case found threw away 126 minutes.

One thing per line, with how long it lasts at the end of the line. The length can be written as 90, 90min, 1h30 or 1:30, whichever you would type without thinking about it.

Everything before the length is the title, so commas and dashes in the middle are fine. A line with no length at the end is skipped, and the page tells you which ones it skipped rather than dropping them silently.

Yes, and not by guessing. It works through every reachable total minute by minute rather than trying every combination, so a list of sixty lines is answered instantly instead of hanging the browser.

There is often more than one combination that reaches the same total. The page shows one of them, and on the clock the others are exactly as good.

That is the honest limit of it. This counts minutes, not appetite - it is arithmetic about a clock, not a recommendation.

The fix is to treat the list as the taste part: take out what you do not want tonight, and the answer changes to fit what is left.