4 ms·
I understand that Netflix and the corresponding enforcement laws may be a great thing for movie and series makers because they finance local productions. That's
by jonathanstrange 6y ago
I understand that Netflix and the corresponding enforcement laws may be a great thing for movie and series makers because they finance local productions. That's good for the local film and TV business but unfortunately they are mostly just copying US productions and "culture."
As a German living in Portugal, I'm in a special situation in that respect and find Netflix offerings lacking a lot anyway. As you'd expect from an American company, they seem to be under the impression that Portugal is part of Spain and constantly advertise Spanish TV series. I don't like them. For some reason there are also Turkish TV series on Netflix, which are pretty much unwatchable crap. German series are also not very good, except for "Dark" which had an interesting aesthetics.
Another thing is that while Netflix series are sometimes okay in quality, "Netflix movies" tend to be absolutely horrible. Some of them seemed to be based on the idea of taking Hollywood movie scripts and putting them through a blender. I've never seen more plot stereotypes than in Netflix movies and stopped watching them entirely. They are essentially just really bad copies of bad Hollywood movies.
I'd rather see old BBC series, rare Hollywood movies and French movies from the 60s and 70s, but in that respect the offerings in Portugal are extremely limited. Netflix seems to optimize for minimizing costs as much as they can while still just about keeping existing subscribers.
In any case, I'd say that the influence of foreign series on the US audience is higher on Netflix than vice versa, because people in the US barely watched foreign series with subtitles before. In Europe, people were used to it already before Netflix.
- rocknor 6y agoAgree with the point about quality of Netflix flicks. Most of them are cheap, cater to the lowest common denominator, optimized to maximize profit. IMO it also negatively affects society, because that's what most people consume. It's bad. With all the content moving to streaming subscription services, the only way forward for me to not get ripped off is to buy physical copies of film/music I like (if available, pirated downloads if not) and digitally archive them.
- daniellarusso 6y agoEven if you did not like them, you still watched them, and did not cancel your subscription, right? It has been a less than optimal time for tv and movie production for over a year, so that may be contributing, as well.
- jonathanstrange 6y agoYes, at least the first episode or the first thirty minutes was often watched, that's why I said: "Netflix seems to optimize for minimizing costs as much as they can while still just about keeping existing subscribers." It's not a sign of quality. I basically didn't cancel my subscription so far because my girlfriend wants to watch some series...but wouldn't pay for the subscription herself.
- hellbannedguy 6y agoI just cancelled Netflix. I agree on the lack of quality. Some shows with a good premise, like Shameless, regress into ridiculousness. It’s almost like the writers know the drill. Meaning pull out every plot twist in the book, and mangle it up terribly. It seems like the acting actually gets worse too? I heard so many good thing about Netflix, but just had to cancel. I thought they would have more classics, but it seems like their business model is catering to people who just want new material regardless of quality? That said, I did enjoy having access to Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone. If I didn’t want to limit my media viewing, I would have kept it for those two shows.
- pjmlp 6y agoYep, you are better off watching the channels available on the Meo and other similar TV services, I do have Netflix in Germany, but don't miss it when back home.