The Watch - Is Netflix Swallowing TV? Plus, ‘Altered Carbon’ and ‘Babylon Berlin’ Reviewed | The Watch (Ep. 227)

Episode Date: February 16, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss TV producer Ryan Murphy’s huge new contract with Netflix and what it means for the industry as well as how Netflix is positioning its content and its place within television and streaming (03:15). Later, Chris and Andy discuss and review Netflix’s ‘Altered Carbon’ (20:00) and ‘Babylon Berlin’ (36:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The new Surface Pro is the lightest most powerful Surface Pro ever. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio. He just arrived in a red envelope. It's Andy Greenwald.

Oh, that was Netflix. Yeah, back in the day, man. That's how we used to get our movies. Yes. In the early aughts. God, yeah. Let's do that. Let's talk about that.

Andy, what's up, man? I haven't seen you in a minute. Thanks for holding it down without me. You got some good shows. Alson Herman came on to talk about stuff. The Ghost of You is here with Franz Ferdinand. That's okay. That was nice.

That was fun for me to do that interview. Happy to be back. We got a lot of TV to talk about. Yeah, we have a bunch of stuff coming up. So Andy and I are going to talk today about sort of the state of Netflix. There's been a lot of Netflix news this week. And we also checked out the two new shows, Babylon, Berlin, and Alter Carbon on Netflix. And we might mention a couple other shows.

And we will mention some other shows. And then. Monday, we will be doing our Black Panther pod, but we will also be joined by Jonathan Abrams. Granlin, new book out, call All the Pieces Matter, which is the oral history of the wire. Very excited. And so we're really excited to talk about Black Panther and the Wire on Monday. That is just, that is a gold standard pod coming up. I imagine next Thursday we will probably hit some combo of McMafia and Looming Tower.

I know you, you are hyped. I'm ready to talk about McMafia. While I have you guys here, make sure you check out Black on the Air with Larry Wilmore. It's a podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network, and he has a great episode this week with Tessa Thompson. So jealous. Who is obviously, you know, is in annihilation. She is in Thor Ragnarok.

Is a queen? Is a queen? Was in Creed? So there's that. You should definitely check that out. And while you're getting ready for Black Panther, please check out all the great pieces we have on Theringer.com about Black Panther. Cam Collins wrote an absolutely wonderful piece about Black Panther for us about

the movie itself. Micah Peters wrote about the history of the comic book character and also Chadwick Bozeman's career so far. So lots of good stuff to check out on The Ringer. You haven't seen Black Panther yet, have you? I have not. I'm psyched. I have not. I'm going to see it this weekend. First, I'm going to talk to you about Netflix. Yeah, man. Greenwald. When I see that Ryan Murphy gets a five-year, $300 million deal, is that more like an NBA contract that year and a half year on the hook for that? There's like an NFL contract where that's like a number, but then like... It's a Mike Trout type contract.

You can chase Daniels that guy. And you can just like, what I guess I mean is like, is that just that's for Ryan? And then they make the shows or is that... I am not a contract expert. Look, what I've come to understand about it, which is not a ton. But what I will say is they are... Netflix is spending $300 million on this deal. They may in fact end up spending more.

they did not cut a $300 million check to Ryan Murphy this week. When you sign someone to a deal, a large portion of it, of course, is just we're paying you. This is your money that you can do it as you please. A large portion of it is also assets, your company, your office, the people you hire to work with you. You know, what I don't understand, and I can look into this, and I'm sure we have industry people who can weigh in on it as well, are their production commitments baked into that figure? I don't know. looking at it from 10,000 feet, which we're doing through like vulture.com reports on it, we don't actually know what the breakdown is.

And it also looks a little bit strange in comparison to their most recent splashy acquisition, which is Shonda. Shonda Rhymes, because that's being reported as a $100 million deal. I'm not sure how you value things. I think Shonda Rhymes is probably more valuable in a lot of ways than Ryan Murphy. but Ryan Murphy makes a ton of stuff across a ton of different genres and styles which is why some people were saying

he is the ultimate Netflix he's a five-to-a-player because he's made sitcoms, he's made dramas, he's made, you know, event miniseries. He's made movies. And, you know, he is so prolific and his company is so prolific that there are a number of projects that haven't even aired yet that will still air on FX as former home.

Yeah, he currently has two shows on the air now, one relatively, I mean, relative to, it's about as successful as a network show can get, a new network show can get right now. And getting more successful, which is 9-1-1, yeah. And then he also has the assassination of Gianni Versagian on FX right now. And horror story is coming back. And horror stories coming back.

And a lot of other stuff in the pipeline. Pose. Another American crime story is planned. This one is supposed to be about Katrina. We yet to be seen whether that's going to ever finally get to the air. this guy was a staple of Fox. He had said famously that he would like to be buried on the Fox lot or that he thought he would be buried on the Fox lot

and that the sale of Fox to Disney had given him some cause for concern. So I think when that first happened, when the Fox and Disney sale happened, there were some people's antenna went up because of that quote. And he said, you know, am I going to have to start putting Mickey Mouse in my shows, which is, I think, like, funny, but not a particularly fairer assessment of what Disney tends to ask people to do.

No, but it's also an extremely savvy public comment for someone who knew his deal was up in July. So there's a little bit of a come and get me, and Netflix went and got it. They sure did. So James Ponziwazik has a piece in The New York Times that follows up this piece of news from earlier this week, and it's titled Netflix is getting huge, but can it be great? And it basically talks about how Netflix is now starting to essentially be television. It's buying up major network television showrunners like Shonda and Ryan Murphy, giving them a home. And it goes into about, it talks about how Netflix isn't really, it's size and it's,

and the amount that it's spending on content is notable, but that it may not have made a great show yet. And that the shows that it does make are, I think in James, to paraphrase James is basically, like TV, but not quite as good. And I think that it's a really interesting read. I think that it's an interesting assessment of the overall quality level, and it's actually trying to look at Netflix in the same way that we used to say, like talk about HBO three or four years ago, that we once talked about NBC when they had certain branded nights of content. I don't think that's what Netflix is.

I don't think that Netflix. is here to revolutionize an art form, I think it's here to revolutionize a platform and a delivery system. And I think that's sad because I do think that we, you know, when you and I first started this podcast, I think we were in a point

where we were like, maybe TV could be all these different things. Maybe we are going through a 70s American cinema moment with television. And I think we obviously have a bunch of incredible artists operating in or around their peak powers.

But the story of television has become more about the distribution and the platform and a little less about like what, where could TV go next? Yes, I think that's really well said. I think that those of us who were wedded to certain narratives in arts coverage, and I'll cop to this myself, I am a fan of networks having identities and brands and watching those develop and play off of each other.

I think that this is the starkest evidence yet that what, comes to television and the business of television as it's been run, large, newer, large companies like Netflix aren't really interested in accepting a buzzword like disrupter. They don't want to disrupt this. They reject it. Yeah. The first sense of that I got early on when Netflix and Amazon jumped in was just in their press departments, for example. Like, they just didn't send stuff for a while or they didn't engage when I was a critic. And now that sounds like very, very small potatoes, which it is. But it was a sign that they were coming from a place where that didn't matter so much.

And obviously both of those companies have amped up in a big way and sort of responded to it and embraced the old parts of the business. But it was a sign early on that they weren't really trying to play by any established rules. They were here to reject them outright and rebuild. So when you think about Netflix, it is, I would love to think of it as a consistent player that, you know, is playing in a number of different fields concurrently, but has some sort of singular vision. I do believe their singular vision is acquisition and domination. Yeah.

Within each division, which is now growing, it's not just, it's not just to say film, half hour, hour, stand-up. It's now Germany. It's now France, and we're going to talk about Germany because I watch a lot of German shows now. Documentaries. It's, yeah. It's everything. So they want to replace TV. And what I would say is they're off to a very good start.

Not just because people like us are saying, oh, we sort of miss the old ways or we're struggling. You and E. and Jim Ponywozik are struggling to, sort of wrap our arms around it. It's evidence in things like just this morning. I saw a tweet from Lil Rel, Rell, comedian, actor. Someone tweeted at him saying, why did Netflix go and cancel your sitcom, man? I loved it. And he just wrote back, Netflix didn't have a sitcom. And what that person was tweeting was, why is the Gerard Carmichael show off the air? That person didn't know that show was on NBC. But NBC canceled it. It's, you know, a couple years ago, I go to my high school reunion and I speak to the current high schoolers,

and the principal does a nice introduction saying I'm a TV critic, and then the first nervous hand is raised to ask a question and says, I heard that you are a TV critic, but do you ever talk about Netflix? Right. It's its own thing. That's the distinction I think that is increasingly becoming obvious, is that Netflix isn't a channel, it is television.

And what certainly wants to be. Yeah. And there's good and bad with that. So let's take a look at something like AMC, for example. AMC has a show coming up this next week that I'm very excited about in my own way. I'm not saying it's going to change anybody's mind about television. It's McMafia. It is just in much the tradition of like an honorable woman or night manager,

just an excellently made show. Really well written, really interesting characters, very tightly told story. If you don't like McMafia, that is what Netflix has on the air for two months. You mean that's what AMC has on the air. Sorry, that's what AMC has on the air. And if you don't like the Walking Dead shows, for two months, it's Walking Dead and Fear of the Walking Dead. And every other hour, it's Rambo and Rounders and whatever else they're showing on AMC with commercials. Netflix is trying to replace the innings eating of movies that are on things like HBO Cinemax on AMC, even to some extent on FX, because usually until 8 p.m., FX is showing movies.

And FX has smartly bought a lot of movies first run rights. Right. underreported but valuable. It's basically replacing the innings eating that happens there with content that they're paying for, is the content that they're making. Now, I think

that means that there's no lead up, here it is, and now every week for eight weeks, we're going to talk about Stranger Things, which we have lamented over and over again. But on the other hand, you never get trapped where it's just like,

I'm not really into divorce and crashing, so I'm just not watching HBO for three months. Exactly right. And, you know, we're, even before the Ryan Murphy deal, broke and sort of changed our podcast from specific shows to a larger conversation. The three shows that I was ready and excited to talk about that I've been watching for the last week, altered carbon, a Babylon, Berlin, one day at a time, very different shows.

Absolutely. All on the same service. Completely. The AMC thing is a really interesting test case, and we haven't talked much about it, and I haven't done much investigating beyond just attempting to pay attention sometimes. AMC, it's hard to imagine a network having a more successful, decade in that they were an afterthought and picked up the two, I don't think it's even arguable, the two best unproduced spec scripts in town, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, went on an unprecedented run

of critical success and brand building and awards success on the back of those shows. Then also off the scrap, he picked up The Walking Dead, which I still remember talking to showrunner Sean Ryan, created The Shield years ago saying, well, if we were in the 70s moment in American cinema, but for TV, this is Jaws. This is the blockbuster. And it dominated TV. So it's hard to imagine a place more set up to play in the

big leagues, but it's as if they made it to the big leagues. And then, oh, by the way, there are actually two new bigger leagues put on top of that league. They cannot play there. The financial disparity between AMC networks and Netflix and Amazon and Apple is outrageous. And if they're

also now buying, not twice as many shows, but between all of them, 10 times as many shows, what do they have to play with? So you think about AMC's successes, Better Call Saul for Sundance, there's Top of the Lake, Honorable Woman, you're mentioning McMafia. This is solid stuff. They're programming well,

but they're being swamped. I don't see, it's not only that I don't see how they survive in terms of quality, because we're going to pivot to talk about the relative merits and quality of some of the shows Netflix has been watching. But conversation does, matter. And if you get in the habit of turning on your smart TV or your Apple TV or whatever you use and just living within one ecosystem within the Netflix window or within

toggling between Netflix and Amazon or Apple or whatever you're doing or whatever you're about to be doing, you forget. Yeah. You forget that AMC is still trying and programming. I mean, Preacher does what it does. We liked it. I think the season fell off a little bit. Better Call Saul feels hermetically sealed now. And I'm not just saying that because I foolishly didn't watch the last season I'm going to before it starts again. But, but, But it feels like they're doing this excellent, excellent work in a bubble that was preserved from 2012 when such a thing could penetrate the culture. Can we talk a little bit about James' sort of overall premise about this idea that it's huge, but is it great? Yeah.

Because I wanted to ask you whether or not you think some of the narrative around whether or not Netflix is pretty good has to do with some of the language used by the initial couple of waves of people being given. shows there, which was, I think uniformly, like, yeah, no notes. Just go. I remember that was like, what was that Will Arnette show that was in? Flaked. It was just like, yeah, we just made it. We made it in Venice. Yeah.

It's, so I think that when you have language like that, if there's no notes coming from Netflix, there is almost like, well, the mediocrity in some cases of the shows are really on the showrunners or maybe on the storytelling medium itself. Well, things slipped through in the first wave of a lot of these places that had a lot of money but not yet a lot of taste. There's no question, no question about that. But from everything I've heard and from people that I've met and people I know who've worked on these shows, Netflix has actually become a very positive place to work creatively in terms of creative partnerships. I know people who've had shows there and they love it. They love that atmosphere.

So I think that's changed a lot and I think that's definitely a previous generation's thinking. the idea of... Well, I was saying no notes, like, go out and make... Well, you can, but then you can also just make stuff that it's just like, well, why does this exist? This hasn't been sharpened to the degree that it could. But I think we are also past the point, and we've seen with a bunch of cancellations

recently that Netflix has done after having basically never canceled anything, that the era of the South Park joke where, you know, the receptionist is saying, Netflix, you're picked up. Sure. That period has passed, too. And they're probably trying to avoid

behind-the-scenes stuff like what happened with Narcos in the first season or either they had like two or three different sets of showrunners. Yeah. The Bazelerman show that kind of just was wildly expensive. That was a paper show basically

where they threw money at an idea that sounded good. I think they've put in more stringent production practices. But let's look at two. First of all, in general, I think it's a problem of TV. Well, maybe it's not a problem.

I think it's a condition of contemporary TV that we have a lot of B-pluses and not that many A's or A-pluses. That's just where we're at. that there aren't ever going to be that many exceptional shows. But now that there are so many shows... That's just like plate appearances, man. I mean, like...

Yeah. You know, this is a big thing, is that when I'm talking about... If HBO puts on seven shows a year and four of them are bad, you're kind of like, whoa, what's wrong with HBO? If Netflix puts on four shows a week, and one of them are bad, or two of them are bad,

or three of them are bad, you're like, I'll wait till next week. Okay, so we should take a break for our sponsors. When we come back, we're going to talk about some specific Netflix shows, including altered carbon and Babylon, Berlin, and one day at a time, and also a wildcard Netflix show that we're going to discuss

in relation to the New York Times article's idea that they make good shows, not great shows. Okay. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Caviar. Life is too short for bad food, for mediocre delivery, for settling for what they are slinging down the street. You're hungry for something better. Let Caviar deliver.

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The crisis in Washington heats up after the attempted assassination of President Keene. And now, as the ultimate outsider, Carrie Matheson must save a government that's going off the rails while Saul fights to stop a resistance movement from exploding into violence. Abuses of power, civil unrest, agents and double agents. Isolated from the White House and the CIA, Carrie finds herself with few resources and many disbelievers as she tries to prove that not all conspiracies are theories. Homeland has returned with new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. Download the Showtime app now to start your free trial. Bottom line, are you in or are you out? And they're out of what? Okay, we're back. So let's talk specifics when it comes to Netflix. So show A, in this case, is altered carbon, which premiered a week ago. And it got, you know, what I think is for Netflix now a standard to above standard press rollout.

Promise, but. There were a lot of posters. There was awareness. Oh, yeah, sure. They did a good job. pushing it. It is a hard sci-fi, kind of blade-runnery, terminatory kind of genre show starring swole Joel Kinnaman from the killing. Is Joel Kinnaman ever not swole, though? I mean, he's never been as, you know, verifiably swole because he's mad naked in a lot of the first episode of this show. You know what I mean? Like, he's showing those DeAngelo muscles. Yeah. From the, from the voodoo era. He actually, his head looks a little small.

Purefoy really gets it in in this. in this show too. There's a cast in this. You know, Angelica Skyler's on this show from Hamilton. All the Hamelheads out there. Here's the thing with this show. Good, so good cast, you know, big concept. Incidentally, the Lakers went and saw Hamilton.

Did they? And Villanova alumnus Josh Hart when asked what Hamilton was about. He said it was about taking your shot. That seems accurate. Should we run down? What did Brandon Ingrams said? I don't know. Only John.

I only got Josh Hart. What did Lanzo Ball for? think about a... I don't think a lot's away because he's been injured for quite a while. Sure.

The show also has, you know, there's some father issues in the show so I wonder if it was a little triggering for him. Alter Carbon has a good

you know, it has good DNA, right? The woman who wrote it Laeta, what's her name? I'm definitely making you say it.

Lata Caligitus. So she is a, as you put it, script god. She's written a lot of stuff for Cameron, she worked on Avatar. She has,

she has the track record. She has the range for this kind of thing. Good cast. good budget, and Miguel Sopachnik, who directed what are generally considered to be the best and most spectacular episodes of Game of Thrones. Yeah, the best

set pieces for sure. Did the did work on the show as well. Personally, I will say, I don't think it's good. I don't know how valuable that is to people out there. I found the first hour to be just turgid and slow and

expositiony and humorless and sort of humanity-free sci-fi grind. There was nothing that elevated, there was nothing that inspired in it. It was directed very well, but it was also a sign of when you have an excellent imaginative technical director, if you don't have the material, this is what it looks like. But what I wanted to say about it in relation to our conversation is it probably doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter in a way that tracks with what I was saying before with the disruption versus the rejection. Meaning on a, not even a traditional network,

but on an AMC, let's say. I think colossal. Money sink. But what it would also need, because of the outlay of money, is they would need to welcome in, or at least make some outreach, towards the fan of quality television, not just the fan of sci-fi. Hard sci-fi. There would need to be something to draw in a fan. Someone who says, look, I love quality TV. I live in this great era of prestige television.

Help me into this. I don't care about genre. Help me in. Yeah. The first episode of this knows a bunch of things. Money's not an object. All 10 of them are going to be there. And the second one's going to start as soon as you're done with the first.

So there really is no effort to make this special other than the expense on display. You know what I mean? Well, that's actually what that's a key part of James's piece. Exactly. Which is this idea that rather than a television show like, say, 911, for instance, is bending over backwards to appeal to everybody. Perhaps too much. Everybody.

This is the line. This is, we'll spend not even 911 money, but like mini avatar money, on something that appeals to a very specific. group of people. And we know we've hooked them. Yeah. We know we've got them. Which is usually the sort of territory of, say, sci-fi channel.

Sure. Which is like a very... But when you watch sci-fi channel shows, they look good, but they don't look like altered carbon. No. No. Right, exactly. And I should say, it's a very fine line to navigate because the thing that you're

talking about very smartly with 911, that's what puts me off of it. Is that every... You said it perfectly when we talked about it, that every character has one detail. It is wide open for everyone to jump on board and as little friction as possible to allow that to happen. The flip side of that could be altered carbon or it could be something like Twin Peaks,

which obviously does not have an on-ramp, but I think is an exceptional work of art. What I wish is that there had been some effort paid to sort of humanity bring people in. Altered carbon is always going to be great in a technical way, but even after one hour, I am fairly confident that it's never going to be a great TV show

and I don't think that matters to Netflix and their business plan. example number two Chris It's a little show called Ozark All 10 episodes of which I've watched Did you really? Yes We're not on camera

I can't summon the same thrill But I want to hear what you thought Of the last couple episodes I think in many ways I read Jim's piece as like A sub-tweet towards Ozark in a way Only because that was Kind of like that version of

The thing that you already liked It's kind of like Yeah well that's I mean I would just say the same words Jim did, but in a different, with different accents. Exactly. So that's the conversation I want to have with you. So I finished the series. And it is so fascinating. It's bad shit. I'm so glad I watched it because my reaction to the show and my emotional relationship to the show is solely in extremes, which fits, I think, for the show.

I hated a lot of it. I think that I was exhilarated and loved a lot of it. I liked very little. Does that make sense? Did you like the preacher plot line in the second half? the season? No. You warned me I would not like that. And no, no, no, I did not care for that. Sam, I am, no.

Did we ever get to the bottom of whether Peter Mullen did his own voice? I got to say, and, you know, I realize since we're folding this into a larger conversation, I shouldn't spoil things for the season, for those who haven't. But as we've talked about before, Peter Mullen, who plays one of the villains in the show, he's so clearly edited around in the first half of the season, less so in the second half of the season, that I was like, they must have done this because they threw up their hands and they knew he was done. So the biggest misdirect for me at the end of the season was that, sorry everyone, he doesn't die. Yeah.

Because I don't know how they're going to work with him more. Fucking Ozark 2 Riverboat Casino. Yeah, great idea, by the way. But I thought of it in the context of this show gives you no lifelines for humanity. Like, I deeply don't care about the bird family. I think they're pretty terrible and I don't care about their life. And that grinds you down after a while. And so episode 6, 7, 8, well, 8 is an interesting episode, but episodes 5, 6, 7, 8 is the Flash.

8 is Coliseco? Yeah. 5, 6, 7. With all the time spent with the birds and with this ludicrous fucking FBI agent, who's one of the worst characters in the last 10 years of television. You know, the excitement I would feel with these adrenaline hits that the show gives you were often, mitigated by the fact that all the TV stuff that happens in between the hits, I just didn't care.

I will say I wonder whether or not you know, we haven't said the words binge too much in this in this Todd. This is relevant to this show's conversation. And I would say that Ozark, the binge watching is a drug. Binge watching is in and of itself

a artistic component. It's an aesthetic component to television now. And Ozark understood that. Ozark definitely understood that there is a hammer at the end of every episode that makes you want to see where the nail went through. And I would say that I wonder whether or not you watching it in these chunks that you did over the course of what six months, three months? Three months. But to your point, I watched it.

And I watched it at first because I wanted to stay friends with you in the next phase of our life. But I kept watching it because I watched it. And there have been many nights when I've either been paralyzed with an decision about what to watch next or felt. like something felt like homework. I watched the show. Yeah. I would do it again. Do not regret.

We all find different ways in. And, you know, of course, anyone would expect that I would say this, both because I like her as a performer and the way I tend to like TV, Julia Garner's character, to me, is the most interesting one in the show. And the potential for that character

to be kind of a weather vein between truly good and truly bad, but this is Ozark. So she straight up murder her family. You know what I mean? So it's, it's, tricky. It is a tricky thing. But all of this is couched under this umbrella of Netflix don't care. Netflix don't care. And if you take advantage of it, you can run with this show that would not

have been made on another network, would not have been allowed to flourish in the weird extremity that it does on another network. And it took people. It works. It works for their algorithm. I also don't think that's an example. And then I'll seed the mic because I'm obviously hot about this show still, which I guess in and of itself is interesting. The show only takes, home run swings. Yes. And it completely fails with on-base percentage. Sure.

I mean, I think that you have to consider the fact that, you know, when we're talking about, did we leave behind a time when we could have been truly innovative and truly progressive in how we tell stories on television? And whether or not the lessons that we learned coming out of the Breaking Bad Wire Madman era were, okay, how do you? we take the veneer of prestige, but then supercharge it so that people never leave, is basically what Ozark did. Absolutely.

And Ozark's pilot, which we've talked about before in much more profane and excited terms, is basically the first five episodes of any other show. First two seasons of some shows. But it still is like, it still tells a 10 episode arc of a show. Mostly. I mean, get at me, Jordana Spiro's agent. Yes, right. What happens to her in the back five?

Ducees. I'm out. She's like, I'm mad of you, Marty Bird. and then she stays mad. Yeah, it's not completely balanced writing. It's a fucking mess. We don't have to deliberate it. I mean, like, we don't have to debate it.

But I guess my point is more that there is innovation within Ozark that I think is really interesting. I completely agree. Even if it still does stuff where I'm like, this is a B-Mai. That's why I wanted to fold it into this. This is second season bloodline. That's why I wanted to fold it into the conversation. Because I think that, I think that that's what, and I think the Pano-Wazuk piece, is really smart and astute, but I do think it doesn't grapple with the idea that maybe some showrunners

are adapting to the new world. And Ozark is a good example of the new TV language as defined by Netflix, because the first wave of Netflix shows, like House of Cards or something, I mean, I always felt that House of Cards was a prestige simulacrum. It is, it is tawdry, it is a soap operatic, it is absurd, and its best moments leaned into that. But the way that it was shot, certainly the way that it was performed and the way that it was presented to us, and maybe we'll extend it, maybe the way it was digested, was that this was the latest in this great tradition of difficult men prestige shows. Sure.

A lot of the other successes that he mentions in the piece have been like blank checking it to talented autos. Or surprises like Stranger Things. Or Stranger Things. But Stranger Things I would fold in with Ozark. I think that these are shows that have learned how to really take the Zykeyes, take what audiences want and supercharge them. like the way flavor engineers supercharged cheese taste on Doritos.

Which, by the way, are a miracle of modern engineering and one of the great contributions of America. I think we would probably be remiss in not bringing up some of the stuff that they've done with comedy. That actually is pretty innovative, I think, whether or not it's a Netflix person isn't responsible for it, or it's just we're going to let Aziz make weird art films, or we're going to let Maria Bamford explore her emotional state with her show Lady Dinah. There are shows, and even if you don't like the ranch, which you have every reason not, you can have your right not to, was like, what if we had a, and we're going to talk about one day at a time, what if we did the traditional in front of a studio audience sitcom, but made it more of a dromedy with profanity and drinking and difficult characters? And I'm hearing similar things about everything sucks, which is the 90s set sitcom that premieres this week, where all the reviewers have said, the first episode will make you a gag on your Fruitopia because it's just not.

90s references dropped for no reason, but then slowly, exactly what you love from all classic sitcoms emerges, which is that you love the characters. So they are definitely on that corner now, too. The best example of which is one day at a time, which is fascinating. The second season debuted a week or two ago. It's really worth talking about in any conversation about Netflix, because on the one hand, this should exist everywhere. This is a Norman Lear sitcom. It should be on right before or after Superstore. It is a multi-camera sitcom in the, most classic vein, it is updated in the most tasteful and intelligent and careful way to account not just for the diversity of the world we live in, but also the issues of the world we live in.

That this is a prestige project on Netflix is bizarre, but maybe this is the only place that it would have made sense. So do you think that in the halls of Netflix, they say words like that? Which words? They say some of them. Prestige. Do you think that they're like, this is, do you think that they look at things in terms of this is, this is, one for them, this is one for us. This is a prestige thing. This is a like... No, but...

Do you think that they think Narcos is an Emmy caliber show? No, I think Narcos gets watched by millions of people. I mean, all this is obscured by the fact that they don't say who watches what, but you can sort of figure it out and, you know, we've talked about this before as well. Here in Los Angeles, the thing I didn't know about until I moved here is award season or freer consideration season, and you see the posters go up. And Netflix puts up...

I mean, we're right next to them here in Hollywood, so we see what they do. They put up like a million posters for the crown. They put up posters for the crown and Master of None, and there are certain shows. The Crown, I think, is well watched. Stranger Things is well watched. But there are some shows that, like Master of None, I think, succeed. Yes, artistically, it's very good. It's like girls' numbers.

But we're not talking about that. What we're talking about is it gets nominated. So they definitely consider that. That has value to their business strategy. But I also think in the new Netflix, which is just global dominant. above all else, and things get canceled. Things that, you know, a Kathy Bates sitcom created by Chuck. Dishoy. Chuck Lorry.

Two and a half men, Chuck Lurie, lived and died on Netflix in about a month. It's gone. It's canceled. In the old days, just to be in business with Chuck Lorry, I mean, why wouldn't they just greenlight a second season? Multi-Camp sitcoms are cheap. Those days are over. So one day at a time, I think, was a mass audience play mixed with a, hey, Norman

Lear's here for me. meeting. Why not? Mixed with a, holy shit, this is really good. But, you know, the creator, Gloria Calderon Kellett just tweeted, you know, please watch four episodes this week because they're making decisions. I don't think that it's, the world of TV is changing around us, obviously, but it doesn't make sense to me that this world would not find a place for this show, which we should talk about in some detail. I mean, on some level, it's a miracle to me. And I said this at the end of the first season. You will watch the first 15 minutes of whatever episode you watch cold and be like, I don't, I don't feel comfortable in this world.

This reminds me of my childhood or if you're younger, you've never seen shows like this. Yeah, right. And then something gets to you. And then it turns the switch effortlessly like a stage play from silly comedy to very... Yeah, to like a Seinfeldian like, oh, it's that guy. Yeah. But then to really topical drama with real emotional stakes, you know. And the tightrope that this show watches is more impressive to me than, you know, you

know, nearly anything else on television, it probably doesn't get the same attention because of the medium it's doing it in. But look, the main takeaway maybe of this conversation is we're dinging Netflix for this or we're questioning their commitment to this or wondering how they operate, but we're talking, which adds to the value. We haven't even mentioned, we just came off of a month of doing six weeks of chapter watching dark and end of the fucking world. That's Netflix. Yeah. You know what we're excited to watch this weekend, Chris and I? the Chris Rock Comedy special. Yeah.

That's Netflix. We didn't even get to Babylon Berlin, which... Let's get to that really quickly. Yeah, by the way, shouts to our audience for continually... Yeah, they're the ones who kind of hit us to this. I didn't even know it existed. Can I just say, a couple years ago on Sundance, a channel we spoke about earlier, there was a show called Deutsche Land 83, which I loved, and I think people should check out.

They are making a sequel series, Deutsche Land 86. I remember when I interviewed the couple that created it, Anna and York, an American woman and a German man, they live there, they created the show. They were basically saying that there really isn't much history of prestige, quote-unquote, TV in Germany. German TV was pretty schlucky, and it was kind of a big play for them to get to make this show. A couple years later, yes, they're making another show, but we had dark. And now we have this Babylon, Berlin, the most expensive show in the history of German television. And this stuff is good.

I'm happy that now that Germany has become the center of the Western world. politically, I'm glad that they're making good shows to match it. What I'm curious about with this, and I've been spending a lot of time in Germany because I've been reading more of the John Russell books. We did one for the Double-Dembrook Club. This is set in 1929 between the wars. There's a lot of communism's happening. People are coming back trembling from World War I.

A lot of drug use, cabaret life. The sets look amazing, looks very expensive. Do I like this show so much? And I do because it's just a different version. It's just a world I haven't seen before because when I thought about it after I came down from the morphine high of episode two, which has a big song and dance number, I was like, this has a lot of things that I don't like in other shows. It has figurehead characters standing in for whole movements of people. You know, the detail of each character is minimal in relation to their place in the larger world. Do I just like it because there's a song and dance number in a cabaret and there are these little ampules of morphine being cracked all the time?

Or is there something more here? I think that it's anytime you get, it has some of the promise of those novelistic shows that I think were part of what we got so excited about television in the first place, even something like Downton Abbey, where we're like, oh, we can tell this multi-layered, multi-dimensional show about this whole spectrum of class of people and people with different character motivations and different set levels of consequences to their actions. and I like the show. I think that I have hit I'm just like right on the edge of just there's like too many characters in my life right now. So like if I'm watching Waco

and I just watched McMafia because it was on in England and then like I'm watching three or four other shows another 10 characters. It just I got... It's just kind of confused who people were

and like there's all so it's 16 episodes. Is it two seasons or is this the whole run? They made a, it made a 16 episode first season it was this big you know co-production between Britain and Germany.

Is aired in Germany or no? No. And these are based on a very successful book series in German. So there's more to draw from. But so far this is the play. But I think it's done well everywhere, so there will be more. Yeah. So I think that I had a little bit of fatigue when it started to hit,

especially even like 12-character German fatigue. Also, because we're hearing a lot of spoken German these days. A lot of characters named Lotto. And the same reason why Dark was sort of, you couldn't look away from Dark because I had really compelling plot. You have to read the subtitles. I found myself sort of like, is there a way? way to put another screen above

my screen while I'm watching this, but I can still see the subtitles, but I can also look at Twitter. But I really like this show. It looks like a billion dollars. I mean, it just looks phenomenal. But there isn't a so far,

there doesn't seem to be any kind of like sci-fi twist or it. It is what it is. And what it is is is pretty amazing. I'm just personally like it hasn't clicked with me. Well, this is also, I think the ceiling for this show is lower than for some other shows

in a different way than the good, not great. I think the show could be exceptional. I'm really enjoying it, but not everyone's going to watch this show. Not everyone, you know, the genre aspects of dark open it up to more fans potentially, but it also manages those genre expectations

in a much better way than altered carbon to continue that conversation. For me, the international aspect of it is the most fascinating part to watch with Netflix. because for a long time, you know, we were, when countries were much more isolated in terms of their television, we would occasionally import something. The office would come here and then it would sort of, that one flourished.

Many, many, many other brilliant British shows were adapted here and just failed miserably because he couldn't adapt them. We're past adapting now. Now we're sharing. And what we're starting to see now that Netflix's aesthetic has been exported, you know, 100% around the world now. People get it, the binging idea. They have access to its shows. to see what we seem to be watching reflected back at us through different countries' lenses. It's always fascinating.

That's the same thing. And we talked about that a lot with the English stuff that was coming back over. Was the impact of, say, the wire on something like, you know. A top boy. Yeah, exactly. Right. All right. Well, let's wrap it up there.

Just to recap, we are in on one day at a time, out on altered carbon and in with some reservations on Bablon. Yeah, I, I, the reservation for me is I don't think we should make that our Thursday watch. There's a lot of them. Yeah. We also have a ton of stuff coming up. Yeah. We got Atlanta coming soon. But before we, before we check out for the day, how are you feeling about Black Panther?

People seem, I don't know if you've noticed. People seem positive. Oh, I'm like 100% excited about it. Yeah. You know what I really appreciated? Because I'm trying not to read too much about it. There was a piece that was on the ringer today about the diner scene in Creed. Yeah.

Basically saying that Coogler wins in his movies. because he doesn't forget the small stuff. Was that Bengal Bobby Mays who wrote that? I think it may have been. Yeah? I think it may have been. I think that's a really smart thing to look for, and I am looking forward to the equivalent of the John scene in Black Panther.

Maybe my hopes are too high for that alone, but I'm psyched. I'm sure they'll be in there. All right, Andy and I'll be back on Monday to Talk Black Panther and The Wire with Jonathan Abrams. Thanks for listening. Pick up his book. All the Pieces Matter on sale now, Baranskies. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Showtime's hit series Homeland,

The show with a finger on the pulse returns for a new season. Abuses of power, civil unrest, agents and double agents. Isolated from the White House and the CIA, Carrie finds herself with few resources and many disbelievers as she tries to prove that not all conspiracies are theories. Homeland returns with new episodes Sunday at 9. Download the Showtime app now to start your free trial.