Hacker Cinema
The Nevers
2021 · TV series · 1 season
Created by Joss Whedon
In the last years of Victoria's reign, London is beset by the "Touched": people — mostly women — who suddenly manifest abnormal abilities, some charming, some very disturbing. Among them are Amalia True, a mysterious, quick-fisted widow, and Penance Adair, a brilliant young inventor. They are the champions of this new underclass, making a home for the Touched, while fighting the forces of… well, pretty much all the forces — to make room for those whom history as we know it has no place.
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2 comments on Hacker News
Overall I feel pretty disappointed in all of this. It seems like they've been dropping all the original stuff like Raised by Wolves or The Nevers and just making a bunch of spin off/remakes of existing stuff like a Harry Potter TV show and GoT spin offs. Just seem dedicated to only taking what they think are safe bets.
Let's not pretend that network television didn't have its fair share of shows being cancelled mid-stream.
It feels like the big difference is that Netflix is culturally bound to having very short seasons, which get pushed out at once but rarely (like, not even once per year). This has a bunch of effects, that make the cancelations more painful.
One is that the creators can't iterate and learn based on audience reactions. The classic network TV show pattern is a bunch of shaky episodes early on, until things click. If the first try didn't work well enough, too bad. You had your shot.
Another is that the creators get no warning for when the show will be over. The only thing they can do is plan for success. While a network TV show that's not doing well enough would often know "these are the numbers we need to hit in the early part of the season, or it's over". And then they can plan for wrapping things up. Sometimes this goes wrong, the ending gets rushed for a show that then miraculously finds another round of funding. But it is still better than the alternative.
The third is that shows have no time to build up word of mouth. When a new Netflix show drops, it is likely dead in the discourse two weeks later unless it was a once-per-year megahit like Stranger Things or Squid Game. When a once per week show drops, it'll get talked about weekly and (if the vibe is positive) pick up viewers. The most obvious case of this I remember recently is the utterly mediocre The Nevers. On the forum where I do my TV and movie discussion on, a Netflix show of similar quality dropping six episodes at once would warrant 5 messages in an omnibus thread, and then be forgotten. This got hundreds of messages of very engaged chat.