NETFLIX IS SO GOOD, IT HAS ALMOST DETHRONED PORN
At some other point in this endless winter when all looks bleak and it is so cold we think it will never end — what other people call March — I should write about how the presence of Netflix in Canada is potentially a very bad thing for the precarious production of original TV drama in this country.
But for now, I just want to write I love Netflix.
International series and miniseries from around the world (OK, so far mostly from the white world).
Intriguing, well-acted, adult storylines about real things, people and places that don’t make you feel watching television is a moronic activity.
An important reminder that not all great TV is produced by the peoples who brought us a war about tea.
Productions that come from countries smaller than ours, making shows that are absolutely and totally located in their own specific places but speak to us all.
Shows that have lead actors built like brick outhouses, as my father used to say, furry enough to qualify as “bears” in the Provincetown parade.
Full of intelligent dialogue between adults that does not make you cringe, as in the Norwegian series Nobel:
Wife (to her soldier husband): How many people have you killed?
Husband: Do you remember our first date? We went to the movies and then back to your place and I asked you how many lovers you had before me? And you took so long, I thought you were debating between three and four and then I realized there were so many that you couldn’t remember.
Wife: I thought we were over then …
Husband: That’s how many I have killed.
How important is Netflix, now a cultural phenomenon?
In a recent report, Variety magazine announced that Netflix is now a lot more popular in hotels than what they refer to as “paid adult fare,” which is code for porn — not that it comes up a lot in daily conversation in my set. I don’t know anyone who has ever told me how much fun they had watching porn while eating their room-service club sandwich. Mayo on the side.
Some years ago, my wife and I made a dismal attempt to be “with it” while we were staying in a swell hotel in Los Angeles that somebody else was paying for. Why we chose to watch the then-infamous homemade tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee still gives me nightmares.
It’s one thing to admit ordering the movie. It is quite another to think back to the checkout moment and how embarrassing it is when you have to sign for your bill and the clerk insists on “reviewing your charges.” Think about that phrase for a minute.
We fell asleep after about 20 minutes, but they were an extremely annoying couple to listen to. And we did not even see the famous endowment good old Tommy is supposed to possess. Talk about losers.
But people do watch hotel porn. A lot.
Yes, Aunt Mildred, all those porn channels in all those hotels used to generate 90 per cent of hotel video-on-demand profits. Netflix now ranks within the top three networks in any hotel where it is available.
Good in the living room together or alone in a strange bed? By any standard, that’s a winning combination.
The original-programming report card since Netflix’s spectacular debut with House of Cards: Clunkers? They’ve had a few.
The French-produced Marseille, a seriously expensive miniseries of supposed political intrigue set in one of the most fascinating cities in the world and starring Benoît Magimel and the great Gérard Depardieu, was so stinky one would have thought the U.S. had lifted the ban on French raw-milk cheeses.
Baz Luhrmann’s “recreation” of hip hop in the South Bronx in The Get Down? There is misguided, and then there is the colossal pretension of recreating an era you might have danced to Down Under but certainly didn’t live in.
Still, on any given day, give me a Nobel or a Fauda or a Rectify, and I will happily share my three email addresses that come with each subscription with anyone in search of A-class entertainment.