Mute

I read a newspaper article by a TV reviewer who was complaining about the volume of new material that Netflix were planning to produce in 2018. How was he supposed to review all of that?... he said.

Boo hoo. Hire more reviewers, maybe?

Anyway, one of his arguments was that there was no way all that material could be any good and that Netflix were just making rubbish to drown out the competition. To support his argument he named Altered Carbon, The Cloverfield Paradox and Mute as examples of recent Netflix productions that were not very good.

Really?

I had recently watched Altered Carbon and thought is was quite good. Not amazing, but certainly not rubbish to drown out the competition... whatever that even means.

So when Mute came up as a recommendation I thought I would try that and see if the reviewer was wrong twice. He was. Mute is OK too.

I can see how someone might watch the first 15 minutes and think "Blade Runner knock-off, 0/10". Is that what critics do nowadays? Watch just the first few minutes and decide. Or maybe not even watch at all... and steal some random comments from "social media" written by god-knows-who.

There is a good story in Mute. You have to watch the whole thing to see it. Because the connections only become apparent in the last third. Before that you are seeing the strands and they look disjoint, but they do come together.

TV has changed. There is already too much material for "professional reviewers" to cover. Get over it. Actually, get another job because you are already writing crap about shows and movies you don't understand or haven't even watched.

Netflix are in a great position because they understand their subscribers. They know what I have watched and what I liked. They seem to be good at making more stuff that I like.

Is there stuff on Netflix that I don't like? Of course. But why is that a problem? As long as I have enough to watch, then I am happy. I am sure the people who don't like what I do, but like what I don't, are happy too.

The notion that TV is either good or bad is outdated.

Isn't the internet brilliant !!!