Not the city, not "Babylon Berlin," but the prequel to "Money Heist."
Did you know about it?
I didn't even hear they were making it, but earlier in the week I saw a listing in the "New York Times" saying it was premiering on Friday and made a mental note to check it out.
Last time we left "Money Heist" it was done, over, history, there was nowhere to go. This is the story of Berlin, you remember that each character had a city name, and a whole new cast of criminals.
So on some level it's a formula, but as the formula plays out you become more comfortable with it. Yes, you miss Tokyo and Nairobi, but their replacements are becoming more 3-D. As for Raquel, the cop who switches sides, that appears to be Camille, at least for the two episodes we've watched already.
Not that I can rave. Then again, there was a lot of set-up, and now it's getting juicy.
Anyway, when I went to pull up the show on Netflix yesterday I was worried about getting the right "Berlin." There's no copyright in titles, this is not the only vehicle that has employed that name. But I was stunned that Netflix served up "Berlin" when the app launched. Does it do this for everybody or just for me? I don't know. But if I hadn't seen that listing in the "Times," Netflix itself would have made me aware of the series.
That's how strong Netflix is, it doesn't need advertising.
You can't get the message across to anybody these days. People are impossible to reach. In the Style section of the aforementioned "Times" on Thursday, they had a two page spread on social media peaks, trends, highlights:
"Top Social Media Trends of 2023: Roman Empire, Grimace Shake, Keith Lee and More - You may have forgotten—or wanted to forget—what happened on the internet in 2023. We're here to refresh your memory."
tinyurl.com/4wbnkvya That's a free link, and I implore you to click through, because I believe, like me, you will have never heard of most of these memes and trends.
That was another story this week, how what is perceived to be big is not so big on social media. The news covers a story about outrageous behavior and it turns out it happened in an echo chamber, very few were aware of it. So people get the wrong impression. Even worse, there are bad actors, like the retail giants who cried about organized shoplifting in San Francisco, you know, you have to keep everything behind a locked door, the Bay Area is a hellhole. Only that turned out to be untrue, it was blown up by Walgreens because they wanted to close stores:
tinyurl.com/2n3564n7 You probably missed this, it made a good story, but it was a lie.
And then there's the canard that we live in a lawless society where people are being murdered left and right. But the truth is just the opposite:
"Homicides See Historic Decline In 2023 Despite Perceptions That Crime Is On The Rise":
tinyurl.com/yyjd3xbw Even in Chicago, the right wing punching bag, that's right, homicides in the Windy City fell by 12.7%.
Now your head is spinning, mine certainly is. Everything we were told was wrong. Or something like that. But even worse is today's news about Brexit:
"Brexit has completely failed for UK, say clear majority of Britons — poll - Only one in 10 feel leaving the EU has helped their finances, while just 9% say it has benefited the NHS, despite £350m a week pledge according to new poll":
tinyurl.com/2p9ykrve That's right, a bunch of dirty, lying scumbag politicians ruined, or at least negatively impacted, an entire country. As for keeping immigrants out, immigration is up!
The public suffers.
Anyway, we all live in our own verticals. Oftentimes manipulated by others. And we're averse to input contrary to our beliefs, outside our silos, if for no other reason than we're overwhelmed!
Did you see that subscriptions to MAX have dropped? They removed the halo of HBO and now they've got a second-rate service that people don't want to pay for. Maybe it will be merged with the third rate Paramount service. As for Disney, other than "The Mandalorian," what has it got?
So Netflix was hiding in plain sight and everybody tried to compete and failed.
First and foremost there was a first mover advantage. But Netflix was all about a plethora of product appealing to a wide variety of people. There just isn't enough new product on the other services, not enough to keep people paying month after month.
And isn't it funny that only Netflix drops all the product at once. Because Netflix is trying to satiate the customer, and knows that most shows get no word of mouth at all! "The Morning Show" on Apple got negative reviews at first, supposedly it has gotten better, but who has stayed with the series? If it's not good enough to drop all at once, it's just not good enough. The product must speak for itself, don't rely on the public to do your work in a world where fewer go to the office and if you do you bring your own Stanley water bottle as opposed to hanging at the water cooler.
So Netflix is just for you. Not that I trust the algorithm, but I am happy it serves up Scandinavian dramas, it knows I'm into them, most are not worth watching, but some are, and I wouldn't have known about them otherwise. And I don't care if anybody else is watching, it's a one to one experience. And in a world where everybody is trying to be broad, appealing to everybody and offending no one, I'm glad I've got my own little bubble sans b.s.
And you might like the "Berlin" bubble. One thing is for sure, there's a lot of riffing on love, and a lot of it is true. It's not like an American show, and production wasn't hurt by the strike, you can pull it up right now.
I'm excited. I might ultimately be disappointed after I finish the eight episodes, but for eight hours I won't have to deal with the crap of the outside world. That was the magic of movies before the industry was ruined by the studios. Yes, a dark room, where you can watch something uninterrupted, marinate in it.
Seemingly everybody blowing their horn loudly is full of it.
So we gravitate to the niches.
But how do we find out about the niches?
Well, the most powerful real estate in the world of television is the Netflix homepage. It's a captive audience. You're being served, made aware of stuff you might like. This is so different from the smorgasbord of messages we're inundated with every day that we do not care about.
The world has changed, but too many want to tell us it hasn't.
What we've learned over the last few years is no one is in control. Other than you. You're an individual with a limited amount of time. You want to be directed, you want help. And there are very few outlets you can count on. Sometimes, it's the Netflix homepage. And that's very powerful.
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