Netflix

[Gotters]

They're sticking themselves in some weird self fulfilling loop with the cancellation policy, which is based on people watching shows quickly after they are launched, but people are holding off because so many shows get cancelled, which leads to shows being cancelled ....... go to 10.

[ZOK]

29 minutes ago, Mogster said:

I'm already at this point. I add new shows to my watch list if they look interesting, and half the time end up removing them before I've watched anything due to them being cancelled after one season or something. It seems pointless wasting time watching new Netflix shows unless they're self-contained, one and done things.

I don’t understand this at all. Raised by Wolves got cancelled by HBO after two seasons, and it was the best thing ever! I’m annoyed that there won’t be any more, but why would I want to miss out on watching the two excellent seasons that already exist because there won’t be any more?

[Illyria]

Also Firefly, as much as it has aged, is still worth a watch in spite of its cancelation.

 

That said, I'm not sure I would have watched 1899 if I'd known the creators weren't going to get to fulfill their 3-season plan.

[Capwn]

11 hours ago, Festoon said:

 

It's shite.

 

Yeah I did give White Noise my usual '20min test' and it just didn't click, I needed some kind of setup for the plot but it's just character studies and world building. Quite similar to the weaker Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson movies that I struggle with like Moonrise Kingdom, Liquorish Pizza, The Royal Tenenbaums etc. They are good movies but I just struggle to get into them.

[Festoon]

7 minutes ago, Capwn said:

 

Yeah I did give White Noise my usual '20min test' and it just didn't click, I needed some kind of setup for the plot but it's just character studies and world building. Quite similar to the weaker Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson movies that I struggle with like Moonrise Kingdom, Liquorish Pizza, The Royal Tenenbaums etc. They are good movies but I just struggle to get into them.

 

But look at the wacky '80s clothes! So wacky!

[Mogster]

29 minutes ago, ZOK said:

I don’t understand this at all. Raised by Wolves got cancelled by HBO after two seasons, and it was the best thing ever! I’m annoyed that there won’t be any more, but why would I want to miss out on watching the two excellent seasons that already exist because there won’t be any more?

I'm talking specifically about Netflix's habit of cancelling what seems like most of their shows after a single season. I wouldn't normally wait for a show to be renewed before giving it my time, but it seems prudent for most stuff on Netflix.

 

I don't treat all shows on the service in quite the same way. I enjoyed Sandman for instance, and keep meaning to give Wednesday a shot, but there's plenty of other stuff I've ended up dropping from my watch list before ever starting as I know they'll never be concluded.

 

13 minutes ago, Illyria said:

Also Firefly, as much as it has aged, is still worth a watch in spite of its cancelation.

 

Absolutely! Like I said, I wouldn't avoid all shows for this reason, and while Firefly left plenty open for future episodes it wasn't like the whole show was a single, serialised story that we'll never see the end of.

 

I'd add that it's not like I'm cutting my nose off to spite my face. There's so much to watch these days, so there's just no reason to start a smaller Netflix show that probably won't get finished.

[Ste Pickford]

I guess I must be different to everyone else then as I don't really want every TV show I watch to be a never-ending ongoing franchise.  I'm quite happy for a tv series to work like a novel, and be finished at the end.

[Gotters]

I love a one and done mini series, what narks me is things that set up all sorts of storylines and then get chopped as you've got no satisfaction of seeing a conclusion to anything for the hours put into it

[Mogster]

Like I said, self-contained limited series are brilliant. The issue is when shows are clearly set up to be the start of a longer story but get prematurely cancelled.

[Ste Pickford]

I think 1899 was very definitely set up to possibly have a second series, or possibly just end, depending on whether they got the thumbs up or not.  The creators almost certainly had ideas about where to take it next, but It totally works as a stand-alone story.

[Garwoofoo]

22 minutes ago, Ste Pickford said:

I think 1899 was very definitely set up to possibly have a second series, or possibly just end, depending on whether they got the thumbs up or not.  The creators almost certainly had ideas about where to take it next, but It totally works as a stand-alone story.

 

It's likely to have a knock-on in terms of how people are going make shows, I'd say we're likely to see more season-long arcs and fewer long-term stories as an insurance policy against random cancellation.

 

Wednesday was like this. Pretty much entirely self-contained, with just a little tease at the end for a possible follow-up - it'll be a shame if we don't get a second series, but it won't leave things feeling incomplete.

 

Personally I still haven't forgiven Netflix for The OA. But everyone's got their own favourite show that was cut down in their prime. I just wish they'd understand that a small but intensely dedicated fanbase for a show gives benefits as well - and a library of established, completed shows will continue to attract subscribers just as much as flashy new stuff.

[Mogster]

I think it's a bit of a problem with their business model. They're obsessed with bringing in new subscribers, and almost everything they do is geared towards this alone. I imagine they have some stats showing what shows achieved this and what shows didn't, and simply kill off the latter. It's probably why their shows don't tend to run very long even when they do get renewed, although that's not such a bad thing.

 

I'm always reminded of the pleasant surprise that was Halt and Catch Fire. Nothing to do with Netflix, but a perfect example of a show that ran for four brilliant seasons in spite of low viewership purely on the back of critical acclaim. I'm not sure something like that would even be possible with Netflix's model.

[Gotters]

20 minutes ago, Garwoofoo said:

Personally I still haven't forgiven Netflix for The OA. 

 

I haven't forgiven the OA for making me watch and quite like hours of the first season then that wanky dance thing at the end ruined it all

[Garwoofoo]

That was the BEST bit.

[ZOK]

I loved the end of the OA. I only watched one ep of the second series, it didn’t really grab me.

[Alex W.]

I do agree with the sentiment that shows shouldn’t be written as a six-season doorstop novel of a thing, especially when you see how some shows basically pad a season’s worth of story over a 5-year streaming deal. Lots of my favourite shows are great because the rode the wave of throwing all their best ideas in a single season story but then got renewed and found interesting ways forward. But Netflix is commissioning these heavily serialised shows and kicking them out again with a unique carelessness. Something like 1899 would surely have been an ongoing prestige project at a smaller network, maybe with a smaller budget if necessary.

[Monkeyboy]

2 hours ago, Gotters said:

I haven't forgiven the OA for making me watch and quite like hours of the first season then that wanky dance thing at the end ruined it all

 

Oh god, the ending to season one of The OA was massive levels of stupidity and cringe. Never bothered with the second season because of it.

[krenzler]

Finally gotten round to watching Love on the Spectrum (both AUS and US). So life affirming and what a "character" Michael is. 

[Fierce Poodle]

5 hours ago, Garwoofoo said:

Personally I still haven't forgiven Netflix for The OA. 

The first series of The OA was excellent. The second series was the biggest load of self indulgent guff I have ever seen. It deserved to die after that.

[Popo]

9 hours ago, Illyria said:

Also Firefly, as much as it has aged, is still worth a watch in spite of its cancelation.

 

That said, I'm not sure I would have watched 1899 if I'd known the creators weren't going to get to fulfill their 3-season plan.

Firefly is a good example, but I’m not sure I’d feel the same way if Whedon hadn’t been given the opportunity to make Serenity, which perfectly rounded out the story of the show. 

[Illyria]

Fair enough!

[Unofficial Who]

19 hours ago, Illyria said:

Also Firefly, as much as it has aged, is still worth a watch in spite of its cancelation.

 

 

Firefly was also given Serenity to tie up most of the loose ends which makes it a little different to other shows cut off before the end.

 

Yes I'm still bitter about the cancellation of Now and Again 24 years ago.

[FishyFish]

Netflix is becoming akin to a  jigsaw shop where most of the puzzles have missing pieces.

 

I was about to start watching 1899 the other day (started on season 3 of Jack Ryan on Prime instead), but doubt I'll bother now.

 

One of my pleasures over Christmas has been watching all three existing seasons of For All Mankind on Apple TV. If it had been shitcanned after one season I wouldn't have done so. Having an archive of ongoing and complete shows is equally important to shoving new stuff out all the time.

 

The expectation that viewers will want (or have time) to watch everything as soon as it lands is misguided.

[Eighthours]

I'm on the verge of cancelling Netflix after a decade, as it's sowing the seeds of its own demise with this algorithm-driven nonsense. I'm sure there are smart people over there who see this - presumably there's someone at the top making overall decisions who's as dumb as rocks. Just as an example, Breaking Bad would have been cancelled by these numbskulls before it became successful. You can't have a slow-burn hit under this model, and when your business relies on having a catalogue of content, it's really stupid to cancel shows before they're given a proper chance, particularly when this is the one side of your business you can control. The 'made by other people' stuff is subject to increasingly expensive licencing and chances of drop-off. Netflix originally had a very good plan to build up its own library so that when, say, something like the US version of The Office vanishes due to the original network starting up their own streaming service in direct competition, it doesn't matter as much as it would have otherwise.

 

I'm more likely to keep a subscription or create a new one when there are several well regarded shows with many seasons and a proper ending that I haven't seen yet. Much less when I see a faltering service that's losing external content and scattershotting loads of one season shows that haven't been given a proper chance. Their movie escapades have also been bizarrely useless. Algorithms DO NOT WORK.

 

Meanwhile, I'm happily watching Apple TV even though there's much, much less on it because the general quality of their shows is higher and they haven't (yet) gone cancel-crazy. It may happen eventually, of course!

 

 

[Hamus]

On 02/01/2023 at 19:55, davidcotton said:

1899 cancelled. 
 

https://netflixlife.com/2023/01/02/1899-canceled-one-season-creators-announcement/

 

Got 1899 shows but 1899 ain't one, hit me.

[therearerules]

Isn't the issue that 1899 wasn't very good? I feel this is the internet complaining about not renewing something they didn't really like anyway, even this place had a general consensus of avoid, and that was from people who even thought Dark was good.

[Mogster]

22 minutes ago, therearerules said:

Isn't the issue that 1899 wasn't very good? I feel this is the internet complaining about not renewing something they didn't really like anyway, even this place had a general consensus of avoid, and that was from people who even thought Dark was good.

No? I haven't watched it myself, but the thread seemed pretty positive on the whole.

 

 

The point is more that this sort of thing is common practice for Netflix. Archive 81 is another show that springs to mind that got one season to set things up before being quickly cancelled.

 

[therearerules]

7 minutes ago, Mogster said:

No? I haven't watched it myself, but the thread seemed pretty positive on the whole.

 

 

The point is more that this sort of thing is common practice for Netflix. Archive 81 is another show that springs to mind that got one season to set things up before being quickly cancelled.

 

Given the reception Dark got that thread at best is damning with faint praise, and that's ignoring the literal damning. TV shows get cancelled all the time when nobody watches them, it's not some horrendous Netflix thing.

[Ste Pickford]

I really enjoyed 1899, but after I recommended it to a couple of people at work at they all came back saying, "urgh, what was that."  They didn't understand what was going on, or got bored, or whatever.  

[Sidewaysbob]

Also. There a plenty of series that build up to a big end set piece that never happens, so they can get a second series commission as everyone clamours for the payoff. 

DC titans was a classic example of a series that had the end of the first series 2 episodes into the second. And it was shit. 

 

If the program makers insist on doing this then I'm happy for netflixs to can a few of them off and make developers keep things self contained.