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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

My personal taste agrees with this based on viewing their catalogue, but i'd like to see evidence that consumers agree, maybe the upcoming earnings report will show cracks in the foundation. Netflix has seemed pretty barren for a while and in trouble imo but then something like Squid Game becomes a global phenomenon and you realize that they have 213 million subscribers globally and likely a pretty good understanding at this point of what drives retention/churn.

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Speaking of global, I have noticed that Netflix is one of the few who offers a variety of non-English/American targeted shows. There are quite a few Indian, Mandarin and Latino focused programs in their lineup, which I haven't seen on the other channels (except for HBO en Español).

Could it be that Netflix has seen that they can't compete in a crowded market with "the big boys" (though their bank share might disagree) and they're making the prudent, global market move? (I'm totally speculating and genuinely looking for an answer. Global enterprise is so far from my field)

EDIT: grammar

Actually most countries mandate a % of local content from Netflix. So they sponsor, buy, produce shows for that country and make it available to the world to expend the catalogue. That is quite nice for smaller director/producer to get access to a global crowd.

I remember a local movie (1) that became, almost over night, the most watched movie in Quebec's history with more than 21M viewer. Quebec population is ~8M.

(1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-first-netflix...

Yeah, they didn't come up with that on their own. But if others who I'd suppose will have to deal with the same regulations fail to make the best of it (e.g. if those others just check the boxes with some clever accounting tricks) it can very much become a unique brand feature. "Stuff that picks up unique qualities of country x fiction while pulling it up from the usual country x provinciality to global standards" can be a very powerful formula.

Yeah, it's pretty intentional. IIRC they set a few strategic international markets where they want to be the best content producer. They've been quite successful in that: Lupin (France), Dark (Germany), Money Heist and Elite (Spain); Kingdom and Squid Game (South Korea).

Also there’s a massive blob of Mandarin shows, especially in the Wuxia and Xianxia genres that appeals to both people with a Chinese background and some niche fandoms of those genres.

Almost all of my home screen in Netflix is foreign language shows because that’s what’s good on Netflix.

> Almost all of my home screen in Netflix is foreign language shows because that’s what’s good on Netflix.

Yeah, same here. I've watched an obscene amount of kdramas and they are adding new ones all the time.

> Speaking of global, I have noticed that Netflix is one of the few who offers a variety of non-English/American targeted shows.

That's something I love about Netflix. Watching German, Russian, Spanish, Danish TV shows is really cool for change

Agreed! La casa de papel (aka Money Heist) and Dark were both super enjoyable.

Do you watch anything particular in Russian or Danish?

Danish: I watched The Rain, and Chestnut Man is on my list to watch soon. I'm also interested in Elves and The Killing.

Russian: I loved Road To Calvary and To The Lake, and watched some of Better Than Us and liked it.

German: One of my favorite shows of all time is Babylon Berlin :)

Norwegian: Ragnarok is kinda interesting.

Egyptian: Paranormal is good, and only 5 episodes long.

Spanish: Cathedral of the Sea is interesting, and I loved Ministry of Time - although this one vanished from all online streamings :/

Swedish: The Restaurant is available on Sundance/Star or some other channels. Like Downton Abbey. Just watched a couple episodes, but it was nice

French: Lupin and Les Revenants (The Returned) - although I think the second is not on Netflix now, but somewhere else. Watched it many years ago

Belgium: not fantastic, but Thieves of the Wood is just one season long and enjoyable.

Italian: I liked Curon, although it didn't seem to please too many people, I think?

On my list: Trapped, which is Icelandic.

Cheat: Hinterland - it's made in both English and Welsh

"Fauda" from Israel is a good show. 3 seasons so far. Some of the writing is questionable, but it's good overall.

Yes, for example I like that Netflix has a variety of French and German shows.

I really enjoyed How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) in dub+sub. Planning to rewatch it in the original German with subtitles.

This is purely anecdotal and subjective but I've tended to dislike Netflix's taste in content as well. I refused to subscribe for years as every time I watched Netflix at someone else's house it seemed to follow the same shallow, drivelly formula. That said there have been a few gems I loved as the volume of content grew, and I get some endurance out of their library of classics (content produced back in the network television days).

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