When a trailer for Q Force (Netflix) was released in June, it caused a kerfuffle on social media. This animated series, about a queer group of spies operating an offshoot squad in the fictional American Intelligence Agency, failed to put its best foot forward with its teaser, which was a ragingly unfunny series of LGBTQ+ cliches and bad jokes. Online commentators were unimpressed by its rainbow...
Fourteen of author Harlan Coben’s 31 novels, we are told, are due to be adapted for Netflix. Your mileage may vary, of course, but as I have a barely satiable appetite for bingeable thrillers, I see this as more promise than threat. Last year we had The Stranger, an adaptation of Coben’s 2015 bestseller, which leapt from cliffhanger to cliffhanger to tell the increasingly baroque-slash-demented...
Around the age of 11, I came close to being on Jim’ll Fix It. I was keen on cricket and my dad wrote to the Saturday-evening TV show asking if I could spend a day practising with the world-beating West Indies team, who were touring England at the time. The producers were apparently keen on the idea but in the end, the West Indies’ busy schedule prevented Jim from Fixing It for me. This would...
Eric signed up for Netflix in around 2005 – drawn in by the convenience. Instead of going to the local branch of Blockbuster to rent a movie, if you waited a couple of days it would arrive in the post, without you having to leave the house. And there was a huge selection of titles – much wider than a small local rental place would be able to stock. “I could sit at home and get almost any movie I...
Netflix has made another move to secure more original anime content, with the announcement that upcoming series Perfect Bones will debut worldwide on the platform The series, the release of which Netflix calls “a milestone in anime distribution innovation”, is set to be a sci-fi thriller dealing with genetic enhancements, conspiracies, and rival organisations manipulating the future of humanity...
American streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video cut the amount they spent on British-made shows for the first time last year, as the UK’s traditional broadcasters invested a record amount in a fightback against the global streamers. The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 spend on programmes from UK production companies rose 12% to a record £1.45bn last year, bouncing back from...
What’s worse for the planet? Driving to the supermarket for your weekly shop or spending all day on Zoom calls while binging The Office on repeat? Now, finally, we have an answer. Sort of. For the first time, Netflix has revealed specific details about its carbon footprint. Using a tool called DIMPACT, developed by researchers at the University of Bristol, Netflix claims that one hour of...
Netflix will reportedly launch a cheaper ad-supported tier for its streaming platform at the start of November as the company tries to stem the loss of more than 1 million subscribers in 2022. The company was initially planning to start offering the service in 2023, but Variety reported last week it had been bumped to 1 November in order to get ahead of Disney+’s planned launch of an ad-supported...
Netflix is one of the most prolific documentary producers around. That means there’s a huge array of choices—but not all of them are good. To help you sift through the glut, we’ve picked out some of our favorite Netflix documentaries, from science to sport, politics to true crime. And if this isn’t enough for you, we also have a list of the best documentaries available on Amazon Prime. An...
Netflix has revealed that 20 million users replayed the notorious NSFW scene in Sex/Life at least once. The streaming platform disclosed the information today (27 September) as part of a wider announcement that the raunchy hit drama has been renewed for a second season. Sex/Life – inspired by BB Easton’s 2016 book 44 Chapters About 4 Men – follows the life of Billie Connelly (Sarah Shahi) as she...