In a comment to my blog post reviewing the film The Penguin Lessons, commenter jimf wrote:
I understand it was an offhand comment that had little to do with the post, but I can’t agree that Netflix has “seemingly infinite options”. I find the vast majority of Netflix content to be virtually unwatchable. The majority seems to be either mindless filler or hopelessly violent “action” pictures, or worse, stars Adam Sandler. Most of the comedy specials are flat and predictable. And good luck trying to find any classic pics made prior to 1960.
I actually agree with jimf. After all, I did not say that Netflix had “seemingly infinite good options”. The trope of people wasting their time surfing the site, trying and failing to find something that they really want to watch finally settling for some dreck just to kill time, has become a cliche.
What I was curious about is the business model. Netflix is merely one of many streaming services, all of whom seem to be churning out new content all the time so you have to think that the audiences for those that are not big hits are highly fragmented and hence small. So how do they get enough viewers to make them profitable? Even the cheaper “reality” shows are not that cheap.
The satirical sketch comedy show Alternatino with Arturo Castro suggests an answer.
Incidentally, Netflix recently heavily promoted to me the new film The Thursday Murder Club. It seemed tailor-made for me, a genteel murder mystery in rural England featuring an older population of residents in an upscale retirement community. It features a cast of highly-regarded actors in Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, and Celia Imrie and is directed by Chris Columbus who has made many well-regarded films.
Finally, I thought, a film that I can enjoy and so started watching it with great anticipation. But I quickly realized that it was really terrible. Absurd plot, poor writing, and (incredibly, given the reputations of the cast and director) implausible performances. I got the impression that they want to make this a series, along the lines of the very much superior and highly enjoyable Knives Out films starring Daniel Craig. Good luck with that.
Here’s the trailer, for what it’s worth.
P.S. I just came across this long article that describes the algorithmic approach to film making.
If you haven’t clicked on an algorithm movie, you’ve probably been offered one by autoplay. Often, the title obligingly lets you know what’s in store: Tall Girl, a 2019 teenage romcom, is about a, well, tall girl; Uglies, a sub-Aldous Huxley sci-fi satire, is about a future in which cosmetic surgery is a rite of passage; in Murder Mystery, Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston play fish-out-of-water Yanks who turn Poirot on a European cruise. They may feature one of the new tier of stars, often big names but one level below those who are able to open films on their name alone, such as Tom Cruise or Margot Robbie. These actors – Sandler, Dwayne Johnson, Jennifer Lopez, Gal Gadot – had the most to gain from kissing the streaming ring. The current king of the algorithm movie is Ryan Reynolds, who starred in 6 Underground, The Adam Project and Netflix’s second most-viewed film, Red Notice.
Algorithm movies usually exhibit easy-to-follow story beats that leave no viewer behind; under this regime, exposition is no longer a screenwriting faux pas. A recent n+1 article revealed that screenwriters who work with Netflix often receive the note: “Have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this programme on in the background can follow along.”
…Among the streaming companies, Netflix is by far the most successful. It now has 301 million subscribers worldwide – 100 million more than its nearest competitor, Amazon Prime Video. Releasing more than 100 film “originals” a year, it is more prolific than even the Hollywood studios in their Golden Age peak.
So money does not seem to be a problem and we are going to get flooded with a lot more dreck.
What is happening is that licensing fees have gone up. It used to be that services like Netflix could get the old movies cheap, the companies that owned those movies were happy to get any consistent money from the old movies. With the explosion of streaming the companies have realized those old movies are worth more and in many cases the companies with big collections are trying to setup their own streaming services. So the old movies cost more to show even when they are available at all. This is pushing the big services to make some material of their own just to expand their library and have something they can advertise that is unique to the service.
The profitably on those shows is complex. It costs more up front to make a show or movie, even a simple one. However, the streaming service doesn’t have to pay per showing on their own material so in the long run it can be more profitable. Particularly when 10 or so years down the road when they don’t care about keeping it exclusive they can license it to another streaming service. This hasn’t happened yet but I expect it will at some point.
The Outer Limits or Twilight Zone did it long ago and probably a lot better. According to Google it was the Twilight Zone.
This 1964 episode is in fact, the basis for the 2024 movie Uglies.
They don’t need luck. The book was written by television producer turned presenter Richard Osman. It was his first novel, and was the subject of an auction for the publishing rights between no fewer than TEN publishers. It was the fastest selling adult crime debut novel ever, selling 45,000 copies in its first three days on sale and became the number one bestseller. No less a publication than The Times described the plot as “ingenious”. There are already three follow-up novels available to read -- The Man Who Died Twice, The Bullet That Missed and The Last Devil To Die. A fifth will likely be the Christmas number one bestseller. It seems very much to me -- and I could be wrong -- that Richard Osman novels turned into visual media are very much like the recent crop of Disney Star Wars products*. That is to say -- they have a built in audience who will watch it regardless. I haven’t seen the film of TTMC, but it’s quality as a film seems almost irrelevant. Unless basically nobody watches it -- and that isn’t going to happen -- then realistically, you can count on all the rest getting adapted too. /shrug/
You connect with the Knives Out series. What’s interesting there is that that was conceived as a movie from day one -- it’s not an adaptation of anything. That may feed into why you find it so superior.
*I make an exception for “Andor”, which is honestly one of the best things I’ve ever seen on television in any genre. It’s an astonishing achievement and I recommend it to everyone. My wife is primarily into Harry Potter and similar mostly, and as a result of being with me also loves Star Trek and Doctor Who. I have never managed to convince her of the attractions of Star Wars, however, and long ago gave up trying. Except… she loved Andor. It’s so good it makes the vast majority of other Star Wars content look like low-effort crap. I’m going to stop ranting about it now, but if you think you’d be interested in a long form take on oppression, revolution, sacrifice and love, give it a go. There are no lightsabers, no Jedi, just real-seeming people living in a dictatorship and either not accepting it… or working for it. Try it.
When I started using Netflix, they also had DVDs and (eventually) Blu-Rays. What I found odd was that the selection of disks was much better (at least for my taste) than the streaming titles. Most of what I watched were disks. When they finally killed off the disks a few years back, they actually let people who had had the service for a while keep their last few disks.
jimf @#4
I think that the DVD model might still be viable for a niche audience that is seeking specific films and does not mind waiting a few days for the DVD to arrive. It is cheap because once the DVD is bought, it can be loaned out any number of times without extra cost, like libraries do, without having to constantly renegotiate rights with the copyright owner.
Mano, are you aware that TTMC is adapted from a bestseller by Richard Osman?
Anyway, I suspect what you find implausable is Helen Mirren as a retired MI6 agent. It’s just that she’s done this before, in the RED (Retired; Extremely Dangerous) movies with Bruce Willis, John Malkovitch, et al. (In RED 2, she shot my cousin), and I suspect that Osman stuck that in as a nod to the RED franchise (which has now been cancelled bcause of Willis’s dementia).
I just thought you’d like to know.
I checked out The Thursday Murder Club in book form from my local library and found it completely unreadable. Its appeal is lost on me--I wouldn’t watch the series even if I still had Netflix. We subscribed at various times: back early in the mailed-dvd era and then streaming for about five years, until it started jacking up prices and paring down content that we enjoyed in favor of mindless crap that we didn’t.
I agree with Raven that Uglies is a remake of that episode of The Twilight Zone that starred the actress that went on to play Elinor in the 1959 movie remake of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. That movie version was very close to the book. I didn’t like the 1999 remake, but I did like the Netflix reimagining.
The only aspect of TTMC that impressed me was the inclusion of a couple with a husband suffering from dementia.
I have KINOFILM. It has a mix of theatricals and documentaries that I’d call “arthouse” from the 1920s to fairly recent. Some very significant directors. Not a lot of selections, maybe 600, but it’s only $6 a month.
tonykehoe @#6,
I was aware that the film was based on a best selling book because that was how it was advertised.
Mirren being a retired MI6 agent was not at all the problem. What I found implausible was the way that the people responsible for the three killings were identified, seemingly by huge leaps of intuition, without the usual laying down of clues and inferences. Also the mysterious missing gangster character, the third partner in the real-estate venture, was also laughable when he appeared.
The film simply lacked the structure of a good detective story, seemingly relying on its cast to paper over the huge holes in the plotting.
@ sonofrojblake
In future, instead of quoting a Wikipedia article you found almost verbatim, it would be more honest to provide a link and blockquote. Like so:
BTW, the original last part of your comment was refreshing and to be encouraged. Please provide more original content rather than trying to pass off that of others as your own.
(That said, it remains a mystery why you failed to absorb the moral lessons of Star Trek or Dr Who, and instead clung to your own brand of intolerant conservatism.)
My SO wanted to watch TTMC. I had no idea about its origin, but having just watched Mobland (also with Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and Geoff Bell), I thought it might be OK. 5 minutes in I realised it was a mistake. Cliché’d, predictable and with huge plot gaps, I think it represents the worst of English whodunnits. Not even Agatha Christie level, in my opinion.
I guess the cast got a good paycheck for it, but I won’t be watching any of the other films, if the books ever get turned into films as well.
I am told the streaming services curiously do not bother with a lot of anime, except those recently released.
It seems that big coroprations cannot be bothered to do anything with their properties if the potential profit is less than several millions of dollars. This means a huge amount of media is locked in, like the decaying documents in the Vatican.
I was looking forward to this series , now not so much
For fans of knives out or detective seties I enjoyed the Residence also on netflix (but it’s length should have been halved)
Absolutely no help for tv crime series recommendations, but if you enjoy reading the golden age style of British crime writing, I’d just like to offer a quick plug for my favourite set of country house mysteries, the Burford Family series by James Anderson, starting with The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy (follow up books are The Affair of [The Mutilated Mink/The 39 Cufflinks]) -- the titles alone are irresistable! The author wrote 3 books set in the late 30s, but written between the mid 70s and 2001, so with a much more modern social outlook. Unfortunately he then died before he could write any more in the series, but they’re so much fun, and I’ve never come across anyone who’s read them outside of my prompting! I got several of my book club members to give them a go and they all raved about them too.
If you prefer more authentic period reading, the British Library have a series of Crime Classics reprints -- books and authors that were best sellers in the first part of the C20 but then dropped out of fashion and were forgotten about. I’ve only read a handful, but they’ve all scratched that Agatha Christie style logic problem itch with maps showing the location of the murder and suspects. A lot of them are quite rooted in place, often with that being reflected in the book title, so there can also be some fun in finding an area you know somewhat or are planning to visit!