
3%
2016 · TV series · 45 min episodes · 4 seasons
Created by Pedro Aguilera
In a future where the elite inhabit an island paradise far from the crowded slums, you get one chance to join the 3% saved from squalor.
3 positive4 neutralfrom 7 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.






7 comments on Hacker News
When I first signed up for Netflix it was (briefly) $8/month. At that stage it had a great catalog of old TV shows, which was (and is) way more interesting to me than movies. I actually figured that anything less than $10/month and I'd subscribe to it forever without thinking about it.
But the prices keep ballooning while the catalog keeps shrinking to the point that Netflix HD is now more expensive than HBO Max. Like WTF? For the record, the UI/UX of HBO Max is decidedly worse than HBO Now was (IMHO).
I support Netflix's strategy of having to make original content as the popularity of streaming caused every content owner to launch their own shitty "me too" streaming platform. Most of these won't survive (eg CBS All Access -> Paramount+).
But Netflix has proven once again you can't solve a problem by simply throwing tons of money at it. HBO is good at producing original content because it has a long history of doing so and has built up a culture to do just that. But Netflix acts like they're just throwing money around (eg [1]). Some of their content is good (eg Ozark). A lot of it is mediocre and samey. Even some of the good stuff gets killed prematurely.
So once Netflix was an "always have". Now it's something I'll sign up for 1-2 months a year to catch up on old content. I'm not paying for 6 different streaming services continually. The only service in my "always have" bucket now is Prime Video simply because Amazon Prime is too useful not to have it.
What I think Netflix should've done is concentrated in building regional content and then dubbing that to other languages and regions. They've had some success with that (eg Money Heist, 3%) but nowhere as much as they could have (IMHO). This should help avoid creating samey content.
But here's how you know this isn't a high-priority strategy: for some reason all the voice acting on dubbed content is beyond terrible. This goes beyond Netflix. Like Netflix has some other dubbed Spanish TV series (I forget the name) and there are common voice actors with Money Heist. And they're bad. Years ago I saw German-dubbed Friends and I couldn't get past how bad the dubbing was.
Why is this? Is this a small industry rife with nepotism? Or is it just something no one cares about?
Anyway, I'm not surprised Netflix is struggling to retain subscribers in the US and Canada. It's simply too expensive and there is now fierce competition.
[1]: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/gilmore-girls-paid-20000-use-john-lennon-song-memorable-rory-dean-moment.html/
> How the hell do they run these operations or have this amount of gear safely in a favela?
BTW Netflix even produced a whole 4-season dystopian scifi TV show about how resourceful young people from Brazil's favelas can be - "3%". It's quite watchable and provides some interesting clues.
Respectfully, this sounds like a dystopia to me. In fact this exact structure has been described in multiple dystopian novels and movies [1]. Dividing people into castes that affect their options in life is a really really bad and dangerous idea for a litany of reasons. Regardless of whether it's based on an assessment or your bloodline, ...or anything.
Doesn't this sentence that you wrote ring any alarm bells for you? "Not very reliable, but it can be better overall than treating everyone equally."
[1] Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:
* 3%, the tv show
* Brave New World (Huxley's book)
* Player Piano (Vonnegut's book)
I like the idea. I find it incredibly tedious to lookup IMDB ratings while surfing Netflix since that's almost all I care about when I'm indecisive ("Just give me a movie roughly in this genre that's roughly decent").
The catalog seems very limited though. I couldn't find the few Netflix shows I searched for from my Netflix homepage: "el internado", "gran hotel", "el barco", "3%".
Feedback: Would be much nicer with permalinks and the history push API so that back/forward worked.
For example, clicking around the movies a bit and then pressing the back button took me back to HN. And would be nice to link someone to "/shows/123", one of the key advantages of websites over apps.
I have to concur with this 100%, most true crime shows from Netflix have felt padded, something where I feel like if the podcast Criminal can make an enthralling episode about an event, the TV versions should be adding a lot more for the 10 hour version. In fact, the only "true crime" series I can think of actually completing is American Vandal, which was not only engaging but laugh out loud hilarious as it mocked itself. I'm truly curious to see if they can capture it in a season 2 without it being a repeat of the same. Of course, there could be some personal taste and behavioral patterns that endear the audible versions of that format more compelling (I usually listen to podcasts during times when I'm not able to be distracted with a phone, articles and texts, such as when I'm driving, yard work, or walking the dog). It could just be that the format for TV relies far more on imagery and visual cues when produced for the screen. I do know that I really haven't seen a real true crime TV series keep me engaged beyond an episode or three, which probably just means I fall out of a different "taste cluster", but there are just some shows that can use visual imagery to enhance a non-fictional topic (Vox's Explained comes to mind here). Unless there is a lot of in-depth information, and a way to make it salient to the story, it's hard for me to value the time commitment.
Likewise, even fictional shows with short seasons can feel tedious at times, which for me, many happen to be British shows, though not all (I enjoyed Safe, but got really bored during Collateral and The Fall, both of which I've heard great things, but much of the storylines just ended up feeling as if scenes were there to "enhance the tension", but served some other purpose). Again maybe super personal and cultural, but I do love long format television, just please give me a reason to keep caring about the outcome without having to wind down some plot rabbit hole).
I might just be impatient and a typical American who is affixed with getting "a hook" somewhere in the first 3 episodes, or I'm probably going to give something else a try. And there are quite a few really good foreign series that I enjoyed, (such as The Rain and 3%) and then some domestic and international shows that put me in the same taste cluster as shows like Dark, The OA and Sense8 that really just never connect. I'm not sure if that's a padding issue per se, but I guess anything that you're not really getting into just feels tedious after a while.
There is a Brazilian show on Netflix, 3%, that explores (caution: spoiler for Season 1) a sterile elite ruling over a dystopia.
>The most obviously missed type would appear to be dystopians characterised by extreme disparities between rich and poor, where the dystopic regime is generally so much better off than the underclass it doesn't need to bother with enforcing or influencing worldviews beyond basic security measures (much of cyberpunk, for example).
The Brazilian TV series 3% is I think worth of mention, as it fits very well in this space.