What happened, Netflix? You were king of the hill – now you're circling the drain | Television & radio
Back in 2013, when Netflix swaggered in out of nowhere and announced the death of traditional television, the New York Times ran a piece headlined “Giving viewers what they wantâ€. It outlined Netflix’s reliance on user data as a commissioning tool, noting that House of Cards came about because executives ran the numbers and realised that a Kevin Spacey political drama produced by David Fincher would be a no-fail draw for its subscribers. Later that year, House of Cards became Netflix’s most-streamed title and won a Peabody award.
Jump forward four and a half years, and the picture looks a little different. Netflix’s newest title is Friends from College, which exists exclusively as a warning never to trust Big Data. Individually, all of Friends from College’s pieces are top-notch â€" it’s a comedy created by Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Nicholas Stoller and starring the likes of Keegan-Michael Key, Cobie Smulders and Kate McKinnon â€" but the end result is a sludgy, unfunny, tonally uneven mess that’s destined to prematurely drown in Netflix’s soup of submenus.
Friends from College feels like such a squandered opportunity that it’s genuinely hard to watch. It’s even harder, in fact, than Netflix’s last notable failure Gypsy. An erotic thriller that’s about as erotic and thrilling as a piece of frozen cod, Gypsy’s reputation for stilted awfulness has already become notorious. Given that it’s only two weeks old, that’s some feat.
What happened, Netflix? You used to be king of the hill. Your scripted content was the envy of an entire industry. By 2015 you’d carved a reputation as the Pixar of television, heaving out hits like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Jessica Jones, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Master of None and BoJack Horseman. True, you weren’t entirely clunker-averse â€" the less said about Hemlock Grove the better â€" but even Pixar had Cars. The point is that “Netflix Original†once stood as a stamp of undeniable quality. If Netflix made it, you knew you were going to enjoy it.
That stamp has faded. Netflix is still capable of making great shows â€" dramas like Stranger Things and The Crown, prestige documentaries like Last Chance U â€" but they’re surrounded by an increasingly wobbly pile of mediocrity. Now, if Netflix makes it, you know you’ve only got about a 50/50 chance of getting to the end of the series.
This in itself might be down to Big Data. After all, the only thing an algorithm can tell you is what people already like, which encourages repetition. You like Marvel films? Great, here’s a selection of overlong and indistinct comic book adaptations. You like prestige dramas? Here’s Bloodline and Narcos, which mimic the look of shows you enjoy while retaining none of the feel. You liked Arrested Development and BoJack Horseman? Here, have the world’s worst sitcom.
Meanwhile, Netflix finds itself being outpaced by networks that have commissioned more satisfyingly risky shows based on old-fashioned intuition. HBO renewed The Leftovers, a down-and-out drama about grief, to the sort of cartwheeling critical acclaim Netflix would give its left arm for. In Twin Peaks: The Return, Showtime has managed to improve on an already-beloved series by focusing largely on mushroom clouds and static. Even Hulu has outmanoeuvred Netflix by refusing to compromise the relentless bleakness of The Handmaid’s Tale.
This said, I still believe that Netflix is a force for good. It does standup specials like nobody else, it has Hollywood running scared and it deserves endless praise for rescuing Tom Edge’s little-watched Scrotal Recall from Channel 4 and developing it into the peerless Lovesick. However, you can’t deny that, if things continue as they are, it’s in danger of running aground over a pile of formulaic duds. All Netflix has to do is rediscover its thirst for innovation. The slightest tweak in quality control and it’ll be back on top of the world again.
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