Hacker Cinema
Servant
2019 · TV series · 4 seasons
Created by Tony Basgallop
A Philadelphia couple are in mourning after an unspeakable tragedy creates a rift in their marriage and opens the door for a mysterious force to enter their home.
3 positive2 negative1 neutralfrom 6 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
7 comments on Hacker News
> Nowadays the energy, ingenuity and talent that would have gone into making smaller films is instead going into making premium TV.
I hate this. I think 80-110 minutes is a good amount of time to tell a story. It's enough time to develop characters and build a world, but it's short enough that to be effective a film has to be ruthlessly edited.
Stories for TV are so bloated. Series like Stranger Things, Servant, The Last of Us and Russian Doll would have been perfectly suited to the movie format, but instead they get padded out to 8-hour seasons.
I should note I don't think this is true of all series, by any means. Lots of stories are well suited to the series format, like Succession, Dahmer or The Boys. And I know my opinion won't be a popular one because the runaway success of long bloated stories shows us which way the winds are blowing.
I enjoyed these TV shows: - Ted Lasso - Severance - Bad Sisters - Servant - Trying - Mythic Quest - The Morning Show (season 1)
And these movies: - Cha Cha Real Smooth - Swan Song - Coda - The Banker - The Tragedy of MacBeth - The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Looking forward to the Sidney movie as well.
I've been starting and early stopping many 10-episodes series because of how much they drag (looking at you, Servant, and Disney series). Maybe I became more impatient lately, idk.
My new hobby is watching movies as they were 4-episodes series. It's great, much more to the point.
Netflix is screwed.
It used to be that if you wanted to watch a movie, you could find it on Netflix, put it in your DVD queue and in a few days receive the DVD in the mail. Their inventory was really good, (with some exceptions) and the service had pretty fast turnaround. Phase 1.
Then broadband started becoming more available, so streaming became a natural extension. Here's where Netflix faced bigger challenges. Initially, IP owners were happy to sell streaming rights for pennies since they didn't have any idea of the real value. Netflix leveraged this to build up an even bigger catalog that wasn't constrained by the number of DVDs in their inventory.
Netflix started to dabble in producing (and buying) content for their streaming. Good stuff like Stranger Things. The Crown. Dark. Babylon Berlin. And IP owners started raising the prices for renewals for movies and series in their catalogs. Netflix decided to cheap out on the quality of their shows. And they started to cut down on their DVD catalog as well.
Now you have all of the IP owners with their own streaming services, so Netflix will find it really hard to stream anything but the crappiest stuff. And they've shown little ability to consistently produce quality series or movies.
Contrast this with ATV+. Apple knew that it had a huge potential customer base, but that licensing IP wasn't going to be sustainable; whatever they streamed had to be exclusive. So they started slow, trying to replace HBO for high quality content. And they had some meh shows like "See." Not bad, but not HBO. Then "The Morning Show," followed by "Ted Lasso." Now they're starting to get some traction. Having an infinite amount of money always helps, but they became pretty good at saying no. "For All Mankind" grabbed a chunk of sci-fi viewers. Greyhound captured the war nerds. Slowly, carefully, they've been building up a pretty solid catalog. Now you have shows like "Servant," "Slow Horses," "The Mosquito Coast," "Foundation."
Cap it off with a series and a movie that have set ATV+ on par with any streaming service: Severance and Coda.
Now ATV+ will never have the catalog that Disney+ has. They might be fine with that. But where does this leave Netflix? Netflix has no serious movies that could compete for an Oscar. They don't seem to have the ability to create must see TV anymore. Perhaps they're too driven by algorithms to give the viewer what Netflix "thinks" they want? I just can't see a path forward for Netflix as other than crappy shows. Even with their foreign content, they face increased price pressure and competition from the other SVODs.
Exactly! Apple TV+ is a sleeping giant. So hooked on Servant. Ted Lasso is one of the best Sitcoms (if that's what this is called) in a long time.
Also don't forget about "See", which I laughed at, at first, but it's actually really good. Defending Jacob, Palmer (movie), and The Morning Show (which I still need to start)
Out of curiosity, why do you think Servant is mediocre? I thought it was a compelling story around the reborn doll, and that M. Night Shyamalan made it consistently creepy and engaging without being outright paranormal in season one.
See, Truth Be Told, and Amazing Stories seem to be widely panned, and I haven't liked them either though I have yet to finish them. For All Mankind would probably resonate most with the HN community. I liked The Morning Show much more than I expected to, and it was a nuanced depiction of workplace power dynamics along with the behind the scenes of those types of shows. Little America is outstanding, the immigrant stories are authentic and multi-layered without being political. Servant is quite good, it's unsettling throughout and you have to pay close attention. Mythic Quest I found to be funny and entertaining, and people who work in game development say it points to underlying truths. People who I know personally are split on it, maybe if you like the Always Sunny in Philadelphia style then you'll like it more. Episode 5 of Mythic Quest comes out of left field and is in my opinion the single best episode on Apple TV+.