Facebook debuts its new streaming service with show 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 Silicon Valley giant is set to unveil its first high-end series, “Sorry For Your Loss,” premiering it at the Toronto International Film Festival last weekend. 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 “Loss,” 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.

The first three personalities come with entertainment bona fides; Steinkellner and Ponsoldt are a noted playwright and indie-film director, respectively, while Olsen, best known for playing the Scarlet Witch in the Marvel series, is a noted film actress via movies like “Wind River.” Ditto the notoriety of Lefevre, who arrived at Facebook last year after years in a similar role at MTV.

“Sorry For Your Loss,” which will release four episodes to users on Tuesday, is set up with what seems like a mystery conceit. There is abundant use of flashbacks as star Elizabeth Olsen’s character, Leigh, remembers her husband (Mamoudou Athie, also at the Toronto event) and both questions and revels in her memories of him. Unlike a show such as TBS’ “Search Party,” which used an actual disappearance and manhunt in its first season to sustain interest in a young female character’s slow disappearance into herself, the only mystery here is whether Leigh really knew her husband, or herself.

Further unicorn-ing the show is that, 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 The 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. “

Also helping: Facebook, at its core, is about these same needs and wants.

The company 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 socalled second screen.

“We all know a lot of emotion is shared on Facebook, and this (confessions of loss) is something that is shared on Facebook,” Lefevre said at the screening. “So it felt like a natural place for it.

“This felt like a really good place to have all the social conversations this platform can provide,” she added.

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. Facebook did not make Lefevre available for an interview.

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.