Ask HN: Why doesn't Netflix produce more of its most popular shows?
For example, why doesn't it release a Black Mirror episode weekly for the entire year every year?
There is a reason people would complain that "every week is the same story!". That's because the constraints of the medium meant that you had to keep deviations to a minimum.
Black Mirror is akin to making a movie for every episode. Every episode has different actors, which means they need to be cast. They have different locations, which means they need to be scouted or built. They have different characters which means a lot more work for writing because every character needs a backstory. Basically they have to start fresh for every episode.
Something like Stranger Things is sort of 1/2 way between -- they have their characters and actors, but they have a lot of locations, and the story varies wildly from episode to episode. Each season is like making a really long movie.
And that's just the production side of it.
From the business side it doesn't make a lot of sense either. The whole point is to provide fresh content for users. If you can provide a new show every month, that's a lot more compelling than a new episode of the same show.
There are many people who like series that are similar each week. Look at the popularity of shows like Friends or The Office.
Maybe a question is, why doesn’t Netflix produce those series that have many episodes but little change each episode?
> Audience gets trained to respond to and then like and then expect trite, hackneyed, numbing television shows, and to expect them to such an extent that when networks do occasionally abandon time-tested formulas we usually punish them for it by not watching novel forms in sufficient numbers to let them get off the ground. Hence the networks' bland response to its critics that in the majority of cases – and until the rise of hip metatelevision you could count the exceptions on one hand – "different" or "high-concept" programming simply didn't get ratings.
> But it's still not fair to blame television's shortage of originality on any lack of creativity among network talent. The truth is that we seldom get a chance to know whether anybody behind any TV show is creative, or more accurately that they seldom get a chance to show us. Despite the unquestioned assumption on the part of pop-culture critics that television's poor Audience, deep down, craves novelty, all available evidence suggests rather that the Audience really craves sameness but thinks, deep down, that it ought to crave novelty.
Always trying to be creative and different can be mentally taxing on viewers. Sometimes people just want comfort shows. With the usual.
If they could invest in only the hits, they would.
If they could reliably improve their customers' happiness with their service, at minimal cost, they would.
If they could cut down on the expense of actors and sets and writers, they would.
recently a lot of Netflix’s most successful shows had deals where the creative team got paid more with each successive season. someone at Netflix set this up to incentivize binge-able shows, but since then, someone else decided it cost too much. so a lot of popular shows got canceled.
Apple TV has been quite good for this. There isn't really bad show so far.
As long as the users stay and they bring you the money, it is good enough.
But in more seriousness, I'm sure they are trying to optimize for producing the least amount of content in order to retain existing users.
If they want to keep it going all they have to do is go back to some of their best episodes and write more stories set in those worlds.
What happened to lead to Metalhead? What’s a rich playboy’s life like in the universe of 15 million merits? Whats the prison industrial complex like in White Christmas? Whats crime like in White Bear? There’s so much content to mine!
Season 6 is thus a disappointment, the worst Black Mirror season.
I'll probably watch the 3rd since I heard it's slightly better, but then plan on cancelling my subscription.
Second episode is a slow burn but it delivers. Third one is the best episode imho, although the ending may shock you.
The fifth episode is classic Black Mirror and may be for some people the strongest in the series.
The one in space featured excellent acting from the actor formerly of Breaking Bad. The level of human cruelty on display left me reeling for a good day and a half.
Honestly, this is one of the stronger seasons. My favorite episode remains Crocodile from a season or two ago: its actress remains criminally underrated.
I expect if we each listed our favorite episodes they’d be pretty different – which is great, and one of the things I like about Black Mirror.
Some filmmakers are all about ideas, others are about vibes, and others are about character-driven narrative (my preference). I think the best are ones who play with all three, which I think Black Mirror continues to do very well.
Personally I thought the episodes I watched were meh at best in most of the categories you listed, but obviously that's subjective.
I guess our expectations have just gone too high.
I found it refreshing that they broadened away from “computer horror” which had started to get worn out. Now it’s closer to a modern twilight zone or outer limits.
At an episode a week, you run out of plot way faster, and your humans are basically signing on to have no other work.
Many shows ran for at least 5 years, and some ran forever (days of our lives would be one example).
So I don't think that is the problem. What is the issue is that Netflix wants to drag you in with a few big hits and then satiate you with much cheaper shows. Unfortunately that doesn't work because they don't have a massive content library, but they still act and price themselves as if they did.
No, “almost every other person on the planet” doesn’t have a “steady job” in the way you’re implying.
There are portions of the workforce that work a 9-5 full time position. There are others that do contract work where they’re temporarily focused fully on one job for a short time span, and also contractors/consultants who take smaller time commitments and work multiple contracts at the same time.
This isn’t just a tech thing, it’s true across many industries.
You aren't going to attract the superstars with a "steady job". There are some incredibly talented TV serial actors however.
It's also incredibly expensive, something Netflix some how disregarded when they decided to make/own most their own content. Thus the excess of low production quality shows
Build an evergreen catalogue. Nobody is watching old sitcoms, but new people watch Lost everyday even though that also got badly affected by quantity requirements due to hype of the day.
That's funny because I know multiple people who re-watched Seinfeld and Curb multiple times, but I haven't heard anyone talk about Lost ever since it ended.
The entertainment is also different since a sitcom doesn't require much attention and is much more bingeable whereas regular shows are hit-or-miss.
But still you can't really mass produce Black Mirror or other shows without them going super downhill. Already for Black Mirror the episodes are always ranked by quality, by season and all-in-all. You mass produce these kinds of TV shows and you end up with The Walking Dead which just takes on a repeat of the same thing.
But if I understand Black Mirror correctly, it's an anthology without a shared world/characters. There'd be diminishing returns much sooner with additional episodes. There's only so much to say about that theme. And we're living it every week anyway.
The standard strategy is to fund spinoffs of popular franchises. Marvel is a good example of this taken to the extreme, where there literally is a constant content stream.