Hacker Cinema
F is for Family
2015 · TV series · 26 min episodes · 5 seasons
Created by Michael Price, Bill Burr
Follow the Murphy family back to the 1970s, when kids roamed wild, beer flowed freely and nothing came between a man and his TV.
2 positive1 negative1 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
Problem is, these kinds of media end up pushing nostalgia for a warped version of an old time. It's like anything based in the 50s or 60s in USA and is not full of racism. My go-to example these days is the Fallout tv show.
That said, you actually can create something positive set in that time while also portraying the bad. For instance, in Bill Burr's F Is For Family.
Are you saying Netflix hasn’t made quality shows that will last through 2039? I’d like to know which company you think has made close to the amount of quality shows Netflix has since 2014. Here’s part of a list I have for a content project. No company comes close to this output in recent history.
House of Cards launched February 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Orange is the New Black launched July 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Stranger Things launched July 2016 (3 seasons, 1-2 more)
—
Dark (2 seasons, 3rd is last)
Glitch (2 seasons, 3rd might never come)
Russian Doll (1 season)
Haunting of Hill House (1 season, anthology)
American Vandal (2 seasons)
Black Mirror (anthology, last season not that good)
The Crown (3 seasons)
When They See Us (mini-series, 2019)
Unbelievable (just came out)
—
Glow (3 seasons)
Kimmy Schmidt (4 seasons, finished)
Arrested Development (they tried, hard to get it all back together after years of being done)
Sex Education (1 season)
Bojack Horseman (5 seasons?) #animated
Mindhunter (2 seasons)
The OA (2 seasons)
Maniac (mini-series)
Wet Hot American Summer (2 seasons, but season 1 is the top notch one)
F is for Family (3? seasons) #animated
Big Mouth (2? seasons) #animated
—
Documentary mini-series
—
Staircase
Making a Murderer
Evil Genius
The Jinx
Wild Wild West
——-
There’s more I’m missing and I didn’t include a number of shows Netflix helps finance but isn’t the main financier or producer or original place of distribution. Shows like Glitch.
Mad Men didn't even have an audience when it aired (<2 million viewers most episodes), and airs on a network that likely won't exist in 5-6 years (or at least won't be producing new content), so it's not super clear to me what your point is about those shows as evidence of how a network grows. The way a network grows is by producing content people want to watch, whether that's disposable content made to last a minute or content made to last the test of time. HBO isn't growing because people are subscribing to watch Sopranos re-runs.
Past reporting suggests churn in most subscription content services is very low, so your Netflix cancellation may be unusual. I'd also add that exclusive content is one part of the story, but there's also a lot of licensed content that's very good on Netflix as on other services.
But for what it is worth, I would rank the following Netflix originals to be "top tier" within their genre -- some of these genres lend themselves more to rewatching than others, and some are closer to my taste than others, some held up in quality through their run more than others, so in a sense I am ranking shows based on their peak quality --
Orange is the New Black; Bloodline; Stranger Things; The Crown; Gilmore Girls AYITL; The OA; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Mindhunter; The Haunting of Hill House; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Master of None; Love; Lady Dynamite; Santa Clarita Diet; GLOW; American Vandal; Maniac; Bojack Horseman; F is for Family; Disenchantment; Hilda; Dark; The Rain; Elite; Chef's Table; Making a Murderer; Shot in the Dark; Wormwood; Wild Wild Country; Salt Fat Acid Heat; Queer Eye; The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell; My Next Guest Needs No Introduction; Lilyhammer; Terrace House; Alias Grace; The End of the Fucking World; Collateral; Wanderlust; Longmire; Black Mirror; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
In addition to these, the following shows are Netflix originals in my region, indicating that although someone else initially funded them, Netflix bought them for exclusive distribution here, and also meet the above requirements:
Babylon Berlin; Bodyguard; Casé; Crashing; Cuckoo; Derry Girls; The Great British Baking Show; Happy!; Happy Valley; The Investigator; Peaky Blinders; River.
I have pretty broad taste in TV and watch a lot of TV while I am programming or running data analysis, so maybe the breadth of stuff I include here is surprising to most. But to the extent your post is a useful anecdote about how Netflix has no great shows, I'm responding to your challenge to "Name one show" that would meet that criteria.
(These are TV shows only, not films. I haven't really liked many Netflix original films although there are a few I would say are great, like Okja and Roma)
F is for Family is the last of their "original series" I tried.
Wow. What a hateful show. It's like they found the world's greatest misanthropist, gave them $10,000,000, and said, "here, make a show that's kind of like The Simpsons I guess."
I have to admit I watched all the episodes, kind of like how when you see a horrible train collision you stick around to see how many bodies will be strewn about when it's over.