Facebook to take on streaming market
Social media giant challenges Netflix and Amazon with series about grieving widow
Amazon burst on the scene with Transparent. Netflix made its mark with House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black. Hulu had its The Handmaid’s Tale. Facebook thinks it’s time it had a few programming friends of its own.
The social media giant is set to unveil its first high-end series, Sorry For Your Loss, premiering it at the Toronto International Film Festival last Saturday. And it turns out the show, about a young woman coping with the sudden death of her husband, is at once highly traditional yet very particular to the platform.
“In some ways this comes in a long line of shows and movies about loss,” said Kit Steinkellner, the creator of the series, which will stream on Facebook Watch, Facebook’s streaming platform. “But I also like the idea of media meeting message. Facebook is a place where I hear about most deaths, most births, most marriages. It made sense for them to do a series about these life events.”
The decision by Facebook to dive into the Emmy-friendly pool raises the question of whether there’s room for another player in the increasingly crowded streaming market. And if there is, is there appetite for the gentle drama that it’s making the leap with?
The Toronto event saw the debut of four of the 10 episodes of the show followed by an onstage talk from Steinkellner, director-producer James Ponsoldt and actor Elizabeth Olsen, along with several other principals. Also speaking, though spontaneously from the audience, was Facebook Watch’s head of development Mina Lefevre.
Sorry For Your Loss, which will release four episodes to users next Tuesday, is set up with what seems like a mystery conceit. There is an abundant use of flashbacks as Olsen’s character, Leigh, remembers her husband (Mamoudou Athie) and both questions and revels in her memories of him. Despite its dramatic tone, episodes clocked in at only half an hour, rare for the form.
Other subplots concern a sister (Kelly Marie Tran) struggling to find her niche while in recovery and their mother (Janet McTeer) juggling her own professional and personal crucibles. It is the kind of drama that will evoke Transparent, Six Feet Under and other melancholic human stories that have faded with the rise of Games of Thrones and more flashy genre programming.
“I think it’s hard to do the real emotional work that our characters are doing in a television series,” Ponsoldt told Washington Post. “It’s just not as sexy or as easy to latch on to than if they’re all ghosts or if Leigh is really alien. Making compelling the wants and needs of ordinary people is hard. But that’s what makes it more interesting.”
Facebook has been circumspect about how it will integrate the show into the platform. But Lefevre said at the screening there will be ways viewers will be encouraged to weigh in on the show in real-time — on Facebook, of course — effectively eliminating the need for the so-called second screen.
As for targeting consumers, Steinkellner noted there will be a “very good algorithm” to reach those users (think: people who like indie film or have posted on the kinds of serious subjects of love and loss the shows’ characters experience). There will also be a group users can sign up for that will alert them to new episodes they can then watch right in their feed.
Steinkellner conceded that having her show live amid so much other information might have given her pause, but she liked the immediacy, not to mention the reach, the platform gave her. Facebook has more than two billion global users.
As Facebook’s first high-end series, the company gave creators freedom they might otherwise not have if they’d been doing this for a while, the creators said. “They didn’t ask for more jokes or more soap,” noted Steinkellner. “Because there was no set brand.”
For those who feel that there’s already enough TV to watch — not to mention enough to read on Facebook — without more to add to the pile, Sorry For Your Loss may be fighting a tough battle. But viewers willing to set aside those concerns if the programming successfully takes advantage of the platform could find much to chew on here.
With so many companies taking their eye off the drama ball, Facebook could be primed to pounce.
“Superheroes are some people’s jams. Other people love slasher films. I love tiny human stories,” Steinkellner said. “And Facebook is all about tiny human stories.”