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Back in December, I told you about the new method of selecting Amazon content that I had just adopted. Amazon owns IMDb and has for quite a long while. I’d assume it was an effort to benefit from that synergy that prompted Amazon to start including the IMDb user rating on every Amazon Prime streaming selection. I liked this. The easily-accessible rating allowed me to quickly triage any entertainment choices that I might be considering. Simply put, I was skipping over anything that rated less than 7 stars.

I am guessing that I wasn’t the only one doing this and it appears to me that, maybe, Amazon didn’t like it. By the time the ball fell on Time Square, the IMDb rating had left its prominent position on Amazon’s summary screens. For the month of January, at least, the rating remained on the details page – three-or-for awkward Roku controller clicks into the menus1. I am thinking that Amazon didn’t appreciate me dismissing the bulk of their content because viewers2 didn’t like it.

In a related story, Netflix (for the first time) released their proprietary user-streaming data. The result (as I read in The Wall Street Journal) surprised many. What topped the list of viewer favorites were not necessarily the best movies and shows available – in some cases they weren’t even very good. One article (I don’t recall which one) speculated that a primary source of Netflix viewing hours is the people who use streaming as “background noise” to their social-media surfing. It is pretty obvious that these viewers are not contributing, in a meaningful and positive way, to intelligent, crowd-sourced critique of entertainment media.

I’ve got to assume that Netflix released these data for a reason and, if I had to guess, I’d say it is to justify (to both investors and customers) some programming decisions they’ll be making in the coming year. They’ve promised to continue releasing their viewing numbers every six months. That’s a plus. Their “secret sauce” has caused much consternation over the past year and a little more transparency3 can’t but help us all understand what we are buying. Forgive me, though, if I think Netflix’s future direction is going to turn out bad for me personally.

Entirely coincidentally, I began watching Netflix’s top-ranked show (per their list) just after the first of the year. At the time, I had not seen their list (nor even any articles about it) so I didn’t know the show was its top title. It did rank well enough on IMDb (7.5 as I type) and I do tend to like spy thrillers. My driver in this decision, though, was that there is always a gap (both for Netflix and for Amazon) between the end-of-the-month purge and the announcements of what is due to expire at the end-of-month to come. I decided to take advantage of this gap by just picking something I was in the mood for – rather than overanalyzing through my various prioritization metrics.

In fact, I actually began watching (in an alternating fashion), not one, but two Netflix “originals.” That aforementioned top-ranked show is The Night Agent. I also took in Cunk on Earth. For what it’s worth, the latter was not on Netflix’s press release of top shows – probably because it has been nearly a year-and-a-half since it came out. Remembering the buzz when it was fresh, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t highly placed on Netflix’s internal lists this time a year ago.

The Night Agent did rev me up a bit. I ended up watching it two-shows-a-night, at least until further expirations on Amazon drove me to take a breather. It’s a formulaically-compelling political thriller that seems new and yet familiar at the same time.

The story is taken from a 2019 novel of the same name by author Mathew Quirk. Quirk worked as a reporter for The Atlantic, writing about crime and terrorism, before becoming a full-time novelist. I could probably spend a few paragraphs critiquing the story and its conversion to a series. Its takes on politics, diversity, law enforcement, and terrorism are all tinged by the order of the day. I’m not going to go that route though. Suffice to say that, whatever its faults, this action/thriller entertained me enough to keep me eagerly coming back for the next episode. Isn’t that, after all, what entertainment is supposed to be about?

I am obviously not alone here. Not only did The Night Agent top Netflix’s super-secret streaming report but it was also quickly signed for a Season 2. I just hope they bring Luciane Buchanan back. Again, I’ll not dwell on the whys and wherefores – but just her name and its ethnic implications speaks wonders, doesn’t it?

Game pairing: Secret Service: Ultimate Sacrifice.

Before I went whole-hog with The Night Agent, I started out by mixing in with it episodes of Cunk on Earth. That show is, as I said, older – but I still remember the circumstances that prompted me to add it to my queue.

It’s popularity was a result of Netflix’s marketing and a buzz on social media, a buzz that was probably an indiscernible mix of genuine and contrived. Upon its release, it was common to see bits and pieces of the series as video clips on your favorite account and that got many people talking – arguing the show’s merits based on that exposure alone.

Particularly in the teasers’ snippets (but, honestly, it’s in the show itself as well), I’d say that Americans and, more specifically, right-leaning Americans get more than their fair share of jabs. This probably gave some the impression that the purpose of the series was to lambast America and her people. This impression was probably felt most strongly by those who never watched any of the show and had previously threatened to drop Netflix altogether over the Cuties hubbub (even though they never watched that one either). I have to wonder if the most vociferous critics even had Netflix subscriptions to begin with.

The debate got personal as it moved on to the social media page of a friend4 of mine. To me, he’s the very epitome of the MAGA Republican – a person who always ran a bit to the populist tilt of mainstream conservative thought (at least on some issues) and found a voice in Trump’s tweets. To his angry, Cunk-hating friends, he explained that they were watching SATIRE. It was supposed to be exaggerated, misleading, and inaccurate. That’s what makes it funny!

And funny it is.

I’m not ready to call this “the new Monty Python” but it does capture some of what makes the best of British humor so funny. Far more integral to that humor than the jibes at various nationalities and eras is the self-deprecation. What’s funny is not the statement that nobody was homeless in ancient Egypt but that someone would so earnestly state that. Funny is a grown woman crying because she thought that the end of the Cold War meant there were no more nuclear weapons in existence on the planet. Funny is pronouncing “USSR” rendered in Cyrillic as “KKKKKKKKK-puh.”

As to the political commentary – well, is that really what it is? That an entertainer from Great Britain would lean to the left of the average American should go without saying. Is this actually another attempt to throw spitballs at America’s “backwards” view of themselves and their place in history? Perhaps it is merely a reflection of the starting point of the writers? Or is this a deliberate injection of subtle humor, making fun of the British who make fun of Americans?

What’s not funny is that we end up getting ourselves all wound up around these types of questions. Wouldn’t it be better just to sit back and laugh?

Game pairing: Civilization VI.

  1. It may have briefly vanished from there also but I’m not sure. Not every Amazon selection displays the IMDb rating (whatever its location – prominent or buried), even when many/most of them do. I thought I saw it disappear from the details screens as well but, as I write this, it is definitely present. ↩︎
  2. I’ll reiterate that the Amazon ranking system is worse than useless in this regard. Most of what is on Amazon rates in the 4+ (out of 5) range and there seems only a weak correspondence between quality and ranking. Objectively-awful movies can get 4.2 stars while a critically-acclaimed favorite is in the threes. ↩︎
  3. Vaguely related – when I posted about The Chosen, I noted that they’ve claimed some extraordinarily high viewership ratings for their show. I was hoping for apples-to-apples comparisons but, whereas Netflix reports hours-viewed, The Chosen boasted the number of viewers for a season or the entire series. It would be difficult even to compare numbers with a more conventional series in any case. The Chosen’s reach was aided by their distribution over a range of free and paid, traditional and nontraditional channels. ↩︎
  4. For what it’s worth, this is the same friend that earlier defended Don’t Look Up under very similar circumstances. Last night, he posted a defense of drag queen story hour by comparing it to Bugs Bunny. ↩︎