EntertainmentStreamingNetflix’s new comedy is a big change for the streaming service – and I’m excited to watchCould this new approach save shows from the Netflix cancellation curse?When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
EntertainmentStreamingNetflix’s new comedy is a big change for the streaming service – and I’m excited to watchCould this new approach save shows from the Netflix cancellation curse?When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Could this new approach save shows from the Netflix cancellation curse?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Netflix)
(Image credit: Netflix)
We’re all familiar with theNetflixcancellation curse, where shows don’t hitNetflix’s targets and end up in the broadcasting bin. But the news around Samara Weaving’s new comedy Little Sky suggests that Netflix may have a solution – and it’s one we’ve seen with plenty of TV before.
According to TV and cinema trade titleDeadline, Netflix hasn’t done its usual and commissioned Little Sky for a whole series. Instead, it’s doing what many terrestrial broadcasters have long done: it’s making a pilot episode first.
It’s important to note, as Deadline does, that right now this is currently the only pilot Netflix has commissioned: it’s still very much wedded to commissioning entire series. But if this succeeds – this pilot of making pilots – then we could see more in the future, which would hopefully mean fewer shows getting yanked just as we were getting into them.
Why is Netflix making a pilot this time?
Little Sky is a comedy show, and an ensemble comedy too – a genre that can be quite difficult to get right because the magic comes from getting its very many ingredients – the casting, the writing, the tone and the timing – just-so. Get it right and you’ve got aGlass Onion, a Community or aThe Office(US); get it wrong and you’ve put a lot of development money into a dud.
Pilots reduce that financial risk, of course, but they also give the programme makers an opportunity to test their show in the wild without filming an entire series – and an opportunity to fix any problems that might otherwise result in Netflix wielding the axe at the end of the first season.
The current Netflix model – and that of many of the otherbest streaming servicestoo – is to treat a show’s entire first season as a pilot. That inevitably means a lot of shows get people invested over the course of a season, only for it to hit a brick wall – and that’s a shame, because there are countless series that didn’t really hit their stride until after their first season. The US version of The Office springs immediately to mind, but there are many more.
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As Deadline points out, many current Netflix hits started life as a pilot including Arrested Development, Lucifer and Manifest, and its current comedy hit That 90’s Show wouldn’t exist if there hadn’t been a successful pilot of its predecessor That 70s Show. And of course, the show that got many of us to subscribe to Netflix in the first place started with a pilot too: Breaking Bad’s pilot episode reassured unconvinced executives that this was a show worth making.
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