Netflix’s original content has been lackluster, in my opinion. I would not be surprised if their long-term future potential drops dramatically in the nearer future.
They have the advantage of being able to use consumer viewing patterns to optimize their new shows, but then the seams are too often visible. Often the shows with better plots suffer from bad acting too. The best of their shows are the ones they seem to have bought as an entire proposition, like "1983" and "Suburra".
From a cultural or art critical point of view, this is a negative though. Movies end up being made to appeal to lowest common denominator tastes or themes for a broad audience.
The recent movie Bird Box is a great example. Total garbage, derivative movie, clumsy, contrived villains, manufactured tension with no actual plot driving any of it. Yet became somewhat of a viral hit.
If this is what Netflix’s data lets them optimize towards, count me out.
I must have expressed myself really badly, since people are reading the opposite of what I intended.
Netflix bet the farm on computer-generated plots, which is partly how they have such an immense quantity of content - yet the badness shines through. OTOH the handful of decent shows they have are all fully fledged concepts that they bought.
Like most people I really have to rethink the value-per-$ of this proposition, but if Netflix just erased all the crap maybe 10 up-to-snuff and 2 to 3 really good shows a year would remain. Worth paying what it is? If every new show was like "1983" or "Fauda"...
When my kids were younger, my wife and I used to joke about some of the kids shows that way, too... "kids like dinosaurs... kids like trains... Dinosaur Train!" If you don't have kids or aren't in the US or something... I'm not just making up a joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_Train
Netflix is literally doing the exact same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinotrux:
> Dinotrux is an American computer-animated web series. It features a fictional prehistoric world inhabited by hybrid characters that are part dinosaur and part mechanical construction vehicle. The larger Dinotrux are accompanied by Rotilian Reptools who are smaller reptiles combined with mechanic's tools.[3] The series debuted on August 14, 2015 on Netflix...
They can do a lot more than that. They know precisely at what points people pause episodes or give up viewing a series entirely, for example. I'm sure someone must have thought of using that to determine what plot structures and pacing captivates viewers.
Which is the Achilles Heel of all recommendation engines. Just because I watched one historical drama doesn't mean that I want all historical dramas all the time. Take a show like Stranger Things. The campy nostalgic thing worked for it, but that doesn't mean I want my next 5 shows to be campy and nostalgic. I want my next show to be something original like Stranger Things was.
And keep in mind, this isn’t actually an advantage they have - scroll through any channel list and you’ll find a TON of crapware tv entirely designed to hook the lowest common denominator for as cheap as possible. That is reality TV. Yes they have fewer barriers to entry for promotion vs having to get it onto a tv schedule, but data points overall just select for optimization along one or two axes (cost, viewership numbers being the most frequent).
Shark week is an example of a viral hit - it’s not that Netflix makes more because they have more genre data.
You can't just go to a producer and tell them, make something about Japan, because it's trending, and use these two actors because they're the most popular at the moment. Creatives don't work based on directives.