![]() Shy teenager Otis (Asa Butterfield) has been miserable growing up with a single mom who’s an outspoken sex therapist (Gillian Anderson). YA has been a fruitful category for Netflix, particularly this rollicking Britcom. ![]() Some have been well-executed versions of familiar TV forms, while others have seemed so wholly new that it’s hard to imagine them existing in the pre-streaming era. In the nine-plus years since House of Cards debuted and changed the streaming originals landscape, some excellent shows have escaped the algorithm’s clutches and made their way onto our screens. And when few Netflix shows feel as essential as what can be found elsewhere, that’s how you get to a huge subscriber loss being presented as relatively “good” news.īut it hasn’t all been intentional mediocrity for Netflix. The suits trusted that the superior caliber of their user interface, the power of their recommendation algorithm, and a heavy emphasis on serialization and cliffhangers would make people want to keep watching more and more Netflix, no matter what. Still, some of it seems to be the result of an ethos among Netflix executives to aim not for great shows, but for ones that are just good enough. So what happened? How did Netflix go from wiping Blockbuster off the map to potentially becoming a business school cautionary tale in its own right? Some of it is simply competition once every entertainment conglomerate realized it needed its own streaming service to survive, Netflix ceased to be everyone’s first choice for where to spend their home-entertainment dollars. Things have gotten so rough for the floundering streamer that it’s planning to introduce a cheaper, ad-supported plan next year to attract new subscribers (or, at least, to keep from losing more). Now, though, many of its most-watched library titles, like The Office and Friends, have moved to streamers owned by their respective corporate parents, while the most buzzed-about originals of the last couple of years also tend to come from non-Netflix streamers, whether it’s Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso and Severance, Disney+’s The Mandalorian, or Hacks on HBO Max. ![]() Netflix was once out so far ahead of the competition that it may as well have been the entire streaming video business for a while. How is this good news? Because the company had previously projected it would lose two million. In its latest earnings call, the streaming giant announced that it had lost almost one million American subscribers over the second quarter of 2022. As Kristen Baldwin wrote in EW's A review of the show, "While there's plenty of sexploitation humor - prepare for close-ups of human nether regions and a remarkable number of phalluses - the show is focused on how its teen characters learn to respect each other and themselves.Netflix finally got some good news last week - sort of - after a long stretch of the bad kind. Though Sex Education finds constant humor in uncomfortable teen experiences and relational messiness, it also cares deeply for each of its characters, recognizing their strengths, weaknesses, triumphs, and pain without judgment or condescension. The series also follows the escapades of Otis' best friend Eric ( Ncuti Gatwa), swimmer and head boy Jackson (Kedar Williams-Stirling), and Otis' love interest Ola (Patricia Allison), as well as a large supporting cast of classmates. Asa Butterfield stars as Otis, a sweet but romantically inexperienced wallflower who teams up with the brilliant Maeve (Emma Mackey) to provide relationship counseling to his classmates, using the knowledge he's absorbed from his sex therapist mother ( Gillian Anderson). This British coming-of-age dramedy is one of Netflix's most wholesome, uplifting series. It's by far the most personal thing I've ever been lucky enough to work on." "There's a very natural thing that happens where, if you're writing anything that tiptoes into a personal place, you find yourself vomiting up all sorts of things into it. "I don't know how long I could have gone without writing it," the writer-director told EW in an interview. The island's handful of skeptics - played by Kate Siegel, Zach Gilford, and Rahul Kohli - feel increasingly isolated as they search for answers and grapple with their faith.īeyond the magnificent performances, Midnight Mass is full of eloquent, thoughtfully crafted monologues that feel more like theater than television, courtesy of Flanagan. The show observes a chilly island community that experiences inexplicable miracles upon the arrival of their mysterious yet charismatic new priest ( Hamish Linklater). This thrilling miniseries from horror maestro Mike Flanagan confronts Catholic guilt, addiction, and existential anxiety through a slow-burning supernatural horror lens.
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