Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdoms | Hacker News Reader

> The stuff with the red N on the poster -- some of it is REALLY good

An overwhelming majority of it is total garbage. It's such a bad ratio that I treat the red N as a negative signal when I'm choosing something.

View on HN

The McDonald's of TV show production. With very, very few exceptions (Midnight Mass, maybe?) I at least know what I'm getting into: designed-by-committee, very very "safe", out of place (most likely contracted) references to other Netflix shows to try to cross-pollinate viewers... not exactly a recipe for success.

Similar to how Amazon Originals now seem synonymous with "we cut the writer's outline from 12 episodes to 6, enjoy the rushed character and plot development!"

> designed-by-committee, very very "safe"

This is why I was so surprised by some of the background references Inside Job was able to drop in its first season. (Do they still call them seasons when they release all at once? Either way it's really good)

I thought Dark was excellent and not at all like you described.

DAЯK was excellent, but as the saying goes, it's the exception that proves the rule.

Yea, I can agree to Midnight Mass. Best quality was the plot of “X discovered by Y who thought it was Z”. But now that I think about it, the cinematography was pretty good. I know some people were put off by the long monologues, so it wasn’t without some odd choices.

Agreed, except your last example. Most shows are much too long now, and extend way past after they have exhausted what little they had to say.

Agreed. Netflix has so much pulp now it's not even funny. It used to produce much higher quality content. After other copyright holders started pulling out they seem to have started focusing on quantity.

The streaming services are in strong competition for original content. Sometimes buying exclusive rights to completed work off the shelf. This content seems to get labeled as an "XYZ original," be it Apple, Netflix or something else.

Do you differentiate between content greenlit and produced by the streaming services from those purchased? I'm curious because they are two different capabilities and it seems each service is attempting some amount of both.

Yes, there is a clear quality difference between the stuff they acquire/license (some of which is quite good) and the utter dreck they produce themselves.

I wasn’t aware that „dreck“ is being used in English. TIL

What other language(s) is that word used in?

It's a moderately rare word in everyday spoken English.

“Dreck” is a German word.

I didn't know that! I got it from my mum who presumably got it from her British mum.

It's traveled fairly broadly on account of having been adopted into Yiddish - I picked it up as a very young child from an issue of MAD Magazine, and was somewhat surprised to find the New Englander side of my family very familiar with it and only bemused at the happenstance of hearing it from a five-year-old.

There is also some original content which is quite good.

Yeah they greenlight almost anything. It means they take a lot of risks which can produce some really creative and unexpected treasures but also a ton of crap. It's basically the VC model applied to content creation. One blockbuster is worth ten flops.

Most stuff on Github is garbage as well, but all the best projects are there.

This analogy doesn’t hold since the best projects aren’t on Netflix. HBO’s TV catalog destroys Netflix from a quality and critical acclaim perspective. I can’t even think of a Netflix show I’d consider to be HBO-level quality.

> total garbage

Which historically correlates with commercial success.

It's why Netflix is more than happy to green-light awful shows such as Emily in Paris.

Definitely.

McDonalds grosses a helluva lot more than Wolfgang Puck -- $19.21 billion vs $57.50 million.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com