[Dormant, move to !television@lemm.ee] Shows and TV

If they cancelled 16 shows but launched 32, that might be ok.

If it's all reality TV and procedurally engineered slop, replacing the auteur films and exciting serials, I'd disagree.

Great piece out on N+1 explaining why Netflix queues have been so bizarre and repulsive as of late.

The difference between Netflix and its predecessors is that the older studios had a business model that rewarded cinematic expertise and craft. Netflix, on the other hand, is staffed by unsophisticated executives who have no plan for their movies and view them with contempt. Cindy Holland, the first employee Sarandos hired, who eventually served as vice president of original content, once compared Netflix’s rapacious DVD acquisition strategy to “shoveling coal in the side door of the house.” This remained true as Netflix ramped up its original-film production. In researching this essay, I was told by sources about two high-level Netflix executives who have been known to green-light projects without reading the scripts at all.

Such slipshod filmmaking works for the streaming model, since audiences at home are often barely paying attention. Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” (“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James, in Irish Wish. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.” “Fine,” he responds. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”)

One tag among Netflix’s thirty-six thousand microgenres offers a suitable name for this kind of dreck: “casual viewing.” Usually reserved for breezy network sitcoms, reality television, and nature documentaries, the category describes much of Netflix’s film catalog — movies that go down best when you’re not paying attention, or as the Hollywood Reporter recently described Atlas, a 2024 sci-fi film starring Jennifer Lopez, “another Netflix movie made to half-watch while doing laundry.” A high-gloss product that dissolves into air. Tide Pod cinema.