Category Archives: Netflix

Netflix records dramatic slowdown in subscribers as pandemic boom wears off

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  • Streaming giant adds 4m subscribers, 2m below forecast
  • Company blames dearth of new content and last year’s growth

Netflix reported a dramatic slowdown in subscribers in the first three months of 2021, ending a record run in growth during the coronavirus pandemic.

The streaming giant added 4 million new subscribers in the first quarter, 2 million fewer than its original estimate of 6 million and a quarter of the 8 million it added in the last three months of 2020. The company expects to add only about 1 million subscribers in the current quarter, which would be its slowest growth on record.

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The anti-Marie Kondo: Netflix celebrates the clothes we keep

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Worn Stories looks to unravel the tales behind the most treasured items in our wardrobes – but is such meaning and emotion easily conveyed via television?

I am not a minimalist: I don’t want to live with extreme amounts of nothing. I like “things”, and I like my things, which means I have several boxes of clothes, bags and shoes in my possession that have accompanied me through the best part of two decades. One of the boxes is my best and largest suitcase. When I was still travelling fairly regularly, I would have to empty out the contents of the suitcase and pile them somewhere else for my return, a process that feels a bit like uncovering memories and repressing them again, two weeks later, with a zip that goes all the way around.

Given the displacement of a series of house moves in my earlier 20s, the fact that I even still possess the navy corduroy American Apparel hotpants I wore to go clubbing at university (now, for users of the fashion app Depop, a vintage item), or the 70s-era yellow, white and purple-striped T-shirt I was wearing when I had an encounter with the far more colourful Iris Apfel, the interior designer, feels nothing short of miraculous. Today, I can recite what I was wearing to interview various figures in my former role as an editor at a fashion magazine, outfits carefully planned though liable to go awry, like when the zip on my green, chequered skirt broke off while meeting Chloë Sevigny.

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Seaspiracy: Netflix documentary accused of misrepresentation by participants

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NGOs and experts quoted in film say it contains ‘misleading’ claims, erroneous statistics and out-of-context interviews

A Netflix documentary about the impact of commercial fishing has attracted celebrity endorsements and plaudits from fans with its damning picture of the harm the industry does to ocean life. But NGOs, sustainability labels and experts quoted in Seaspiracy have accused the film-makers of making “misleading claims”, using out-of-context interviews and erroneous statistics.

Seaspiracy, made by the team behind the award-winning 2014 film Cowspiracy, which was backed by Leonardo DiCaprio, pours doubt on the idea of sustainable fishing, shines a spotlight on the aquaculture industry and introduces the notion of “blood shrimp”, seafood tainted with slave labour and human rights abuses.

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Schitt’s Creek motel for sale – minus the ‘Rosebud’ sign

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First the Rose family’s former mansion hit the real estate lists – now it’s the 10-room motel they called home

The motel home of the Rose family in the Emmy-sweeping Canadian TV series Schitt’s Creek is up for sale for C$2m.

The Hockley Motel in the Canadian town of Mono, Ontario, was a key filming location throughout the six seasons of the hit CBC sitcom.

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How Millie Bobby Brown used her superpowers

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The Stranger Things star is still in her teens, but has moved beyond new kid on the block to be a Hollywood power broker

It was clearly a moment designed to perplex. Fans of the hit Netflix show Stranger Things were left speculating at the end of season three as to how and why Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, had suddenly lost her supernatural power to move things around with her mind.

Theories have ricocheted across social media during the long wait for the return of the show. But Brown, an English actress who is only 17, has already made such an impact with her Stranger Things role that this spring the question seems something of a side issue, even among her many devotees.

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Netflix weighs up crackdown on password sharing

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Streaming service tests feature that asks viewers if they share household with subscriber

Netflix has begun testing a feature that asks viewers whether they share a household with a subscriber, in a move that could lead to crackdown on the widespread practice of sharing passwords among friends and family.

Some Netflix users are reported to have received a message asking them to confirm they live with the account owner by entering a code included in a text message or email sent to the subscriber.

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Golden Globes 2021: Nomadland and The Crown major winners

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Netflix royal drama and Chloe Zhao were toast of the night amid technical difficulties and against background of diversity issues

With spotty wifi, lagging sound and Zoom chaos, the 78th Golden Globes was a half-virtual ceremony once again dominated by British stars but marred by technical difficulties and renewed scrutiny on the awards’ lack of diversity.

Related: The full list of Golden Globes 2021 winners

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Other TV is available: did Netflix sweep the Golden Globes by default?

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The absence of I May Destroy You was the most memorable part of the small-screen awards, where voters had seemingly binged the biggest streaming hits – and little else

It has always been hard to care about the Golden Globes, and God knows that it’s difficult to rouse the enthusiasm to care about anything one year into a pandemic. So, in truth, last night’s special pandemic edition of the Golden Globes – an entertainment awards show made in a year when most entertainment has either been cancelled or postponed – barely even deserves acknowledgment.

In fact, if last night’s show will be remembered for anything at all – which in all honesty seems like a stretch – then it will be the swirl of controversy that engulfed its nominations. In summary: when its shortlists were announced, the best TV show of the year (I May Destroy You) was nowhere to be seen. But the worst TV show of the year (Emily in Paris) was. It’s also worth noting that many lavish treats were gifted to voters by the production a year ago. All that, plus it was just revealed that not a single black person participated in the voting process.

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‘Record companies have me on a dartboard’: the man making millions buying classic hits

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Hit songs can be a better investment than gold – and by snapping up the rights, Merck Mercuriadis has become the most disruptive force in music

Merck Mercuriadis had a good Christmas. On Christmas Day, the No 1 song in the UK was LadBaby’s Don’t Stop Me Eatin’, a novelty cover version of Journey’s 1981 soft-rock anthem Don’t Stop Believin’. It replaced Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You, which had topped the chart 26 years after its original release. Both songs are unkillable, evergreen hits, which are closing in on 1 billion Spotify streams apiece. Both songs are among the 61,000 owned, in whole or in part, by Mercuriadis’s investment company, Hipgnosis Songs Fund, and epitomise the thesis that has made the 57-year-old Canadian, in less than three years, the most disruptive force in the music business.

Put simply, Hipgnosis raises money from investors and spends it on acquiring the intellectual property rights to popular songs by people like Mark Ronson, Timbaland, Barry Manilow and Blondie. In a fast-growing market, what sets Hipgnosis apart from competitors is its founder’s bona fides as a veteran A&R man, manager and record label CEO. Like an old-school music mogul, Mercuriadis sells his brand by selling himself. Unlike those moguls, he’s a buff, teetotal vegan with spartan tastes. “The only material thing that I really care about is vinyl,” he says. “And Arsenal football club.” He looks rather like a rock-concert security guard: shaven head, burly torso, plain black T-shirt, hawkish gaze. Mark Ronson calls him “the smartest guy in the room”.

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Making a superhero: how Pelé became more myth than man | Jonathan Liew

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Netflix’s new film captures the legendary Brazilian’s genius, but its lead character remains a fascinating enigma

Casa Pelé, the small two‑room house in Três Corações where Pelé was born in 1940, is now a popular tourist attraction. As no photographs or descriptions of the original house have survived, it was rebuilt entirely from the memories of Pelé’s mother, Dona Celeste, and his uncle Jorge, with period furniture and fixings sourced from antique shops. And so what greets visitors today is really only a vague approximation of the house where one of the world’s most famous footballers spent his earliest years: a heavily curated blend of hazy memories and selective detail. As you walk in, a wireless radio plays classic songs from the early 1940s on an endless loop.

As it turns out, this is also pretty much how Pelé himself is remembered these days. It’s 50 years since he played his last game for Brazil. Only a fraction of his rich and prolific playing career has survived on video. The vast majority of us never saw him play live. And so for the most part, the genius of Pelé exists largely in the abstract: something you heard or read about rather than something you saw, a bequeathed fact rather than a lived experience, a processed product rather than an organic document.

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Redwall is coming to Netflix: where to start for kids (and adults)

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Brian Jacques’ tale of valiant mice and no-good rats introduced me to fantasy fiction. My daughters love it too, and here are some reasons why everyone should

If, like me, you are a fan of Brian Jacques, then the news that Netflix is working on an adaptation of Redwall will have you setting the abbey bells a-ringing in joy. Jacques’ bestselling stories of talking mice, squirrels and otters (the goodies) and rats, foxes and wildcats (the baddies) gave me so much happiness as a child. The first novel, 1986’s Redwall, was my introduction to fantasy: Matthias, a young orphan mouse, seeks a lost sword to see off an evil rat army led by Cluny the Scourge. (“Cluny was a God of War! Cluny was coming nearer!”) Heroism and sacrifice, comedy and evil – all of life is contained in Jacques’ anthropomorphic world.

After Redwall, Jacques told the story of how Redwall Abbey came to be, in the sequel Mossflower, as Martin the Warrior (another mouse, of course) arrives to save the creatures of the forest from the grip of the wildcats (Tsarmina Greeneyes is a particularly wonderful villain). Mattimeo continued the saga, following Matthias’s son as he is kidnapped by the slaver fox Slagar the Cruel (another excellent baddie; Jacques does villainous animals very well).

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Oscars release first shortlists for 2021 Academy Awards

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Boys State, MLK/FBI and Crip Camp among contenders as categories announced include best documentary and best international film

Shortlists for nine Oscar categories have been unveiled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), an intermediate stage in the thinning-out of films that have qualified for consideration for the Academy Awards. The categories include best documentary, best international film and best song, as well as best live action and documentary shorts.

The rules for each voting process vary, but in most categories a preliminary vote from industry specialists in each field is employed to create the shortlist and then the final five nominations, with the full membership of the Academy invited to vote on the winner.

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Is big tech now just too big to stomach?

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The Covid crisis has turbo-charged profits and share prices. But are the big six now too powerful for regulators to ignore?

The coronavirus pandemic has wrought economic disruption on a global scale, but one sector has marched on throughout the chaos: big tech.

Further evidence of the industry’s relentless progress has come in recent weeks with the news that Apple and Amazon both raked in sales of $100bn (£72bn) over the past three months – 25% more than Tesco brings in over a full year.

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Out of the dark ages: Netflix film The Dig ignites ballyhoo about Sutton Hoo

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Archaeologists at British Museum and National Trust report surge in interest in 1939 Anglo-Saxon find

It was when she spotted #SuttonHoo trending on Twitter that Sue Brunning knew this was not going to be just like any other week.

As the curator of the early medieval collection at the British Museum, and the guardian of the spectacular Sutton Hoo treasures, Brunning is well used to fielding interest in what are justly some of the museum’s best loved exhibits.

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‘I think I’ve written more Sherlock Holmes than even Conan Doyle’: the ongoing fight to reimagine Holmes

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Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective has been endlessly rewritten. But nearly a century after the author’s death, how new writers portray him remains contested

The first ever mention of Sherlock Holmes came in A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887. Dr Watson is looking for lodgings, and meets an old acquaintance who knows of someone he could share with, but does not recommend.

Young Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his wine-glass. ‘You don’t know Sherlock Holmes yet,’ he said; ‘perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.’

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She survived in the wild against all odds. I took her class to learn how

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Woniya Thibeault, the runner up on Netflix’s Alone, is offering an eight-week survival course, teaching more than how to skin a deer and tie a knot

Left to fend for herself on Arctic land, with only 10 pieces of gear – among them a sleeping bag, a pot, and a bow and arrows – Woniya Thibeault didn’t just want to survive. She wanted to find joy in the process of surviving.

Scattered miles apart in the same rugged wilderness were nine other contestants looking to outlast one another and win big on the History Channel’s popular survival reality series Alone. In it, contestants compete to stick it out in the wilderness for the longest time with limited resources – all have the option to tap out if it gets too much. The prize money – $500,000 – would have changed Thibeault’s life, but winning wasn’t her top priority. She was there for the experience.

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Lupin’s Omar Sy: ‘We wanted to show what the French are capable of’

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The actor stars in Netflix’s biggest French-language hit as a gentleman thief. He and the director, Louis Leterrier, explain how the drama drew in 70 million fans worldwide

“We wanted to show what the French were capable of in terms of making a series, but frankly we didn’t expect it to do what it has.” Omar Sy, the star of the latest Netflix smash hit, Lupin, is speaking over the phone from Senegal. The line between London and Dakar isn’t great, but the charm that has helped his slick, charismatic character – a modern day gentleman thief – connect with audiences around the world is still evident.

Streaming services have been the dominant source of cultural output in the past year, so the chances are that you have at least heard of Lupin, even if you haven’t got round to bingeing Netflix’s biggest French language hit to date. Ranking in the Top 10 on the platform in multiple countries – climbing to No 2 in the UK and the US – as well as being projected to have reached 70 million households in the first month of streaming, Lupin is a family-friendly show – perhaps one of the elements that has given it an edge over the likes of Bridgerton and The Queen’s Gambit.

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Cobra Kai: from dumped YouTube gambit to Netflix smash hit

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Turning a sequel to The Karate Kid into a TV series might not have sounded wise but this blockbuster show has found life in a tired franchise

A modern TV reboot of classic 80s teen film The Karate Kid sounds like an almost comically bad idea. It’s the sort of suggestion you can imagine a creatively desperate TV executive leaving for himself in a panicky Partridgean voice note while drunk on a Tuesday night. So many ways it could go spectacularly wrong, and virtually none where it could go right. And yet, with that very same back-of-a-fag-packet premise, Cobra Kai – the smash new Netflix series – has gone miraculously right, racking up 73 million viewers, according to the streamer’s latest figures.

Related: 'There's chunks of wisdom': How The Karate Kid launched MMA careers

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How France’s Lupin became the surprise Netflix hit of the season

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The charming series combines Ocean’s Eleven’s slickness with the implausibility of National Treasure to become the first French series to crack the US top 10

The greatest trick by Lupin, a new French series on Netflix, is disguising substantiveness in plain sight. The show, created by the British showrunner George Kay and inspired by the beloved French character Arsène Lupin, packages over 115 years of inspiration (dating back to the character’s invention by writer Maurice Leblanc in 1905) in a slick, swift escape easily binged in a day. Its star, the French actor Omar Sy, towers over his scene partners, perpetually unreadable yet brimming with charisma; his character, Assane Diop, is a con man with a heart of gold able to turn his outsized presence into an uncatchable master of deception.

Related: Call My Agent: get au fait with the smash hit French comedy-drama

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Call My Agent: the French TV hit that viewers and actors adore

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The comedy, whose fourth series hits Netflix this week, shows France’s TV can match its film

Fast approaching 50 and fed up after two exhausting decades at Artmedia, the top talent agency in Paris, Dominique Besnehard decided, one day in 2005, that he would quite like to turn his hand to producing something of his own.

“At the time,” Besnehard told Le Monde, “Desperate Housewives was all over the telly, a huge success. I just thought, with a couple of colleagues, we could maybe make a series a bit like that, but about the job we do for a living.”

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