Oct. 2, 2019 "Repackaged, reused, rejected": Today I found this article by Angelo Muredda in the Edmonton Journal:
The streaming wars recently entered a new phase in the battle for the future when Netflix announced the acquisition of the global online rights to NBC sitcom Seinfeld starting in 2021.
The latest in a series of board-setting chess moves between established streaming giants and next-wave disrupters was quickly followed by the heretofore unseen HBO Max’s competing volley: Buying the rights to CBS ratings top dog The Big Bang Theory.
It was all too easy to detect flop sweat on the grand daddy of the streamers’ upper lip with its early announcement of Seinfeld, which will still reside on Hulu for the next year and change — at least in the United States.
In Canada, both Seinfeld and The Big Bang Theory are currently the property of Crave. That was thanks to a grim earnings report in mid-July that cast a dark cloud over the company’s potential to navigate the road ahead without answering some serious questions about return on investment. Netflix, it seems, still can’t quite determine the winning ratio between original content and enduring back catalogues for attracting long-term subscribers.
A bright red danger sign for a hallowed company that previously had something of an easy ride in the press with the exception of some snarky words on their subpar original offerings, the report revealed that Netflix had its first major loss of subscribers in the previous quarter and hit a ceiling in terms of its audience, falling well short of its predicted global expansion.
Trying to stop the bleeding after a very dire and very public $26-billion drop in market value, CEO Reed Hastings reportedly emphasized its room for growth in India in the damage control call to investors that followed.
Enter Seinfeld, for which the reported cost of $130 million (all figures in U.S. dollars) for a multi-year deal was apparently too rich for Netflix’s blood as recently as 2013. But now Seinfeld’s role in assuaging nervous investors and viewers warily eyeing the unsubscribe button now seems critical.
Forbes has pegged landing the ’90s show about-nothing for the foreseeable future as an investment of more than $500 million, higher even than the payouts for The Office and Friends at Nbc-universal’s newly announced Peacock service and HBO Max, respectively.
In all three cases, the sums represent exorbitant numbers on which to hang one’s future success, but perhaps more comforting to investors than slapping an equally rich price tag on original properties.
The open question that now faces all of these services is what the point of that investment will turn out to be if the future of streaming looks, as it seems to right now, a lot like the past of television: Overpriced, balkanized cable packages and syndicated reruns blasted across any number of channels.
Is this not precisely what streaming was supposed to save audiences from in the first place?
It’s a question that extends to both those streamers’ uneasy financial backers and soon-to-be (if not already) overwhelmed consumers who can’t fathom how three different NBC heavyweight shows, the sort any preening peacock would want as feathers in its cap, could end up on three separate streaming services.
Further complicating matters is the as-yet-unseen contribution of two emerging players whose offerings also point nervously to the past even as they park on the edge of the future.
For all its potential to be a must-have service for parents of children who want nothing more than to reassemble their favourite Avengers, the announced programming by Disney+’s franchise tangents and remakes feels hopelessly beholden to the company’s past.
With its own rich and tightly guarded back catalogue and more recently cultivated library of Marvel franchise behemoths, Disney+ reads as another case of preparing for the future by lining all one’s corporate ducks up in a row. The service’s overeager ads throw the titular plus sign between “Disney” and all its intellectual property offshoots, from Marvel to Star Wars to National Geographic.
Despite the company’s former credo of “Think different,” Apple TV+ seems to be chasing a similar vaguely nostalgic brass ring, albeit relying on other creators’ achievements rather than its own canny business acquisitions.
It’s calling on a bevy of established filmmakers and actors with deep entertainment bona fides — Steven Spielberg and Ronald D. Moore on the creative side and The Office’s Steve Carell and Friends’ Jennifer Aniston in front of the camera — to lend an air of legitimacy and quality to a service that lacks a clear brand identity.
That’s to say nothing of even more uncertain quantities and curios like the unfortunately named Quibi, the Jeffrey Katzenberg-founded streamer in the wings that purports to chop up films from world-class directors like Spielberg and industry veterans like Catherine Hardwicke into short episodes (or “quick bites”) for mobile consumption.
Quibi officials recently promised the Los Angeles Times the game plan is to offer “the quality of HBO” as well as “the convenience of Spotify,” pre-defining themselves largely with reference to a hit parade of companies they believe they are unlike, from Snapchat to Youtube.
If there’s any coherent lesson to take from this dash for renewed relevance and hope for what’s to come it’s that streaming companies, once seen as the gatekeepers to a brave new world of content libraries, can’t seem to step forward without looking backward.
Desperate to lock us into newly re-renting media we may already have watched, both the streaming giants and little fish alike are burning through billions to temporarily house the past, until the next big acquisition or devaluation makes them think a little harder about the future.
Oct. 25, 2019 "Double the Rudd, double the fun": Today I found this article by Raju Mudhar in the Star Metro:
Living With Yourself
(Netflix)
(3 out of 4)
8 episodes
Can you ever have too much Paul Rudd?
“Living with Yourself ” proves that the answer is no. In his first leading role on TV in decades, Rudd does double duty in this seriocomic tale that tackles middle-aged ennui, feeling like you are stuck in a married rut and what it is that actually makes a person who they are.
Rudd plays Miles Elliot, a worn-out ad executive who just seems tired of his life, though it looks pretty enviable from the outside — a nice house in the ’burbs, a good job and a beautiful wife. He’s been avoiding fertility clinic appointments for months, though, and just seems lost.
A co- worker suggests a treatment that leads to an incredible series of events, and all of sudden there are two versions of Miles, which upends life as he knows it. From there, there are echoes of everything from “Multiplicity” to “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” but this version — created by former “Daily Show” producer Timothy Greenberg, and directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris of “Little Miss Sunshine” fame — takes it owns path down this imitation situation.
Rudd does good work here, although there is some cheesy green- screen work during some of the double encounters, and some obvious “oh, he’s the schlubby one” tricks involving messy hair and glasses.
That said, there are still some moments throughout where it takes a moment to remember just which Miles exactly is which. Rudd is smartly and slyly playing with his almost-too-likeable persona with a pair of flawed characters here.
One of the things that elevate this above sitcom level is some interesting use of storytelling perspectives, with some episodes told completely from the perspective of one character, and then flipping back in time for the next one and showing it from another character’s point of view.
Similar to Amazon’s Prime Video’s “Undone,” this is a series with a sci-fi twist, but it’s not really that much about that, it’s the dynamics between the two near-identical men and his/their wife, Kate, played by Aisling Bea, who does great work creating a character that’s actually much more likeable than either of Rudd’s.
This is much more super- normal as opposed to supernatural. It is the boring mundanities of real life which drove Elliot into this situation, and the fantastic that makes him realize what is actually important.
Tonally “Living With Yourself” is a bit all over the map — the best moments are when it tries to stay grounded in realism, although there are also a few too many trite and contrived moments, and all-took nowing conversations with drive-by characters. This series had a viral moment with a first episode scene with a throwaway gag featuring Tom Brady.
The focus on a marriage that feels like it has run out of steam worked for me, although some quick interactions with rivals and jokey authority figures feel like setup for a second season, where exploring the wider world could ramp up the tension.
As this is, this dark comedy succeeds because of it focused on a family’s issues and by going to some unexpected places, which lifts it above most similar double- trouble stories.
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