Yesterday at noon, VanRamblings had lunch with eastside activist Jak King.
A short ways into the conversation, Jak raised the topic of The Bodyguard, Britain’s biggest TV hit in years, attracting a record 17.1 million viewers for each episode of the crime series’ 6 episodes, now available on Netflix. Once Jak had read The Guardian’s five-star review of The Bodyguard, he set about to binge-watch the first five episodes of the hit BBC TV series.
Richard Madden as David Budd and Keeley Hawes as the home secretary, Julia Montague
The previous evening, meaning to take a brief break from our writing, we checked into the propulsive series, finding ourselves transfixed.
And that’s the way it is with Netflix, the must-have streaming service.
Eleven thousand first run films are available on Netflix, 20% of which are made in-house by Netflix (that figure will rise to 80% by 2020), with 7,500 TV series from across the globe available for your viewing pleasure 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No wonder Netflix won an unprecedented 23 Emmy’s at this year’s Academy of Television Arts & Sciences ceremony.
Netflix will début 57 new original shows and movies in November.
September and October of this year were two of the most impressive months Netflix subscribers have ever experienced when it comes to Netflix’s original content — including Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Maniac, just one of 52 different original shows and movies released by Netflix in September.
Débuting today on the Netflix streaming service, just in time for Hallowe’en, the well-reviewed The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, starring the heart of the AMC TV series Mad Men, Kiernan Shipka, as the titular teenage witch, the updated story a far cry from the days of Melissa Joan Hart’s frothy TV sitcom, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the new story something to scream about wrapped as it is in a moody, dark, funny, and stylishly atmospheric package that could be not be a better herald of fall and the Halloween season. Definitely a series to binge & watch with friends.
In addition to the horror genre (The Haunting of Hill House débuted earlier in the month), Netflix has also become the home of a genre of film that once was a Hollywood staple: romantic comedies, those mid-range cost films that generally found an audience, largely female, that Hollywood no longer seems to be interested in. Thank goodness, then, that Netflix has stepped up to the plate.
In August, the neglected genre was brought to new life with the streaming hits Set It Up, The Kissing Booth and To All The Boys I Loved Before, the latter (made in B.C.) an online sensation, featuring two winning new stars, Lana Condor & Noah Centineo, making legions of new fans not only for the young stars, whose careers have catapulted into the stratosphere, but for Netflix, which continues to gain a half million new subscribers each month.
Whatever your favourite film genre — action adventure, sci-fi / speculative fiction, foreign film, Oscar winners, British films, animation, family & children’s films, classic movies, crime thrillers, faith and spirituality, film noir, indie films, plus another 100 film genres — Netflix has you covered. Starting at only $8.99 a month that makes for not a bad film lovers deal.
