Netflix made a name for itself in the television field with the production of House of Cards and Orange is the New Black in 2013. The political drama with Kevin Spacey, with an adult tone marked by the direction of David Fincher, continued the cynical trend of antihero initiated by the United States cable channels. The prison drama, on the other hand, was characterized by mixing humor with the crudeness of a women’s prison, giving voice to minorities and a then-new feminist perspective.
To break into the market and into the cultural conversation, a minimum of quality and the will to transgress with respect to the offer of free-to-air television was required. A decade later, streaming has devolved: the more mainstream a series is, the more likely it is to take off among subscribers.
When Netflix decided to share consumption data for the titles in its catalog in the first half of last year, the series that had the lead was The Night Agent with 812 million hours watched. The thriller, about a young White House agent who becomes involved in a conspiracy, was classic: Shawn Ryan’s (The Shield) scripts could have been recycled to produce a 24-season run.
The same had happened in the last half of 2022: Wednesday, which exceeded 1 billion hours in its first month, had been written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, creators in 2001 of Smallville, the television prequel to Superman. The series derived from The Addams Family could have Tim Burton associated as director and executive producer but it played it safe: it did not delve into the sociopathy of the character played by Jenna Ortega.
The cases are piling up. Reacher, the action series based on the novels by Lee Child, was the most watched series on Amazon in 2023. It is as honest and effective in the action scenes as it is simple. My Life with the Walter Boys, the Netflix teen phenomenon of recent months, would have no problem airing at night on the Clan channel.
A place to dream, a light, low-budget drama, is becoming one of the oldest series on the same platform, renewed for a sixth season. Seeing that the British Deceptions has accumulated 37 million views and 238 million hours in its first week, a figure that has not been seen on Netflix since Wednesday, the trend is confirmed: the usual gruesome TV movies have been transformed into miniseries for streaming.
The public has gone from only searching for treasures on platforms to, on a regular basis, choosing accessible titles whose story they can recognize as well as the mechanisms to tell it. It is the search for the familiar in reaction to the saturation and oversupply of content. With the attraction of more and more traditional television viewers, user preferences are mimicking those of free-to-air television.
After elevating those that broke with the themes and limits of the series, value is now given to the classic.
