Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

i feel like netflix is pumping out entirely too much original content these days. their ratio of hits to misses seems awfully fucking low now.

Their original content has always been largely poor. There's just more of it now

I made it part way through episode 2 of Maniac before punching out. Godspeed to anyone who continues...

think i mentioned it before but a friend of mine who worked with Netflix says they want to premiere a new original series or film every single day of the year. not sure if that includes international distribution of series from foreign territories or strictly Netflix originals but either way it's a ton of new content. i can't even keep up w/it. i usually check out of streaming originals pretty swiftly if they're not really good to great (cf. Mindhunter, GLOW, Bosch, etc), i don't have patience for "kinda okay" or "sorta decent"shows anymore and that's 95% of them.

Anyone else watching the Innocents? It's not very good, but now I've watched 5 (of 8) and feel I should stick with it to the grim death.

xp that's so much TV in general these days - we're spoiled for choice, especially compared to the dreck we were forced to suffer through even 20 years ago. i gave up on trying to watch hour-long shows, too much effort now

I haven't had cable since like 2004, and don't have regular tv, so relying only on netflix I welcome even the mediocre original programming. And I love mediocre rom-coms/teen shows.

xp being spoiled for choice is why i think it's kinda funny that people got very excited about a Full House reboot in 2016! i actually think the best streaming shows (or international shows available to stream in the U.S.) are on par or better than virtually any other shows elsewhere at this point. that's maybe not saying much esp w/r/t network TV. it's bad out there, i mean i witnessed an episode of Big Bang Theory being committed recently.

xp that's so much TV in general these days - we're spoiled for choice,

I disagree with this. we're not spoiled but ruined by more terrible content that there's ever been. i know i'm a curmudgeon but even the supposedly good stuff is about 5-10% of the total (generous) and i think that a very small amount of that is actually good we are being offered a whole load of shit. if you compare that to terrestrial tv then that's an extremely low batting average. even the terrestrial tv is watchable (in the uk) but it serves a completely different function. news, soaps, reality shows, lifestyle shows or whatever. even if it's not good it's not egregiously awful either - you switch over to something else and land on something that can fill the time. hell, you'll even switch over to something actually great and watch that. all of this is by orders of magnitude greater than being presented with an endless wall of shit that the internet says is *four stars* that you have to *choose from* and you can barely make it through an episode of. i know this makes me an old-fashioned consumer and annoying and my cynicism perhaps annoys a fair few of you (with good reason) but so much of this content is so completely terrible and has a negative effect on culture, i think.

this is another thread that, i guess there should be. i keep meaning to make it tbh. it's more about how the delivery method affects us adversely especially when the delivered product is so bad rather than something being played out here (recommendations or whatever). the good to bad ratio now is so so low.

People need to stop paying for unlimited options and just curate their shit. It saves so much time and money. I never am able to mindlessly shuffle through channels already in progress. I have to always make a concerted choice to watch something, whether streaming or on netflix. It makes a world of difference.And I also never ever see commercials, which I guess may be a gap in my cultural knowledge.

i know, from talking to friends, that they very often do exactly the same as me - that is, open the app and look through it for 10-20 minutes then close the app. this seems to be equivalent to flicking through the channels but isn't like it at all, really. it seems like a paralysis of choice but it's really more like an absence.

x-post i guess that tv performs a completely different function for me then. it's an interesting discussion and this thread maybe isn't the place for it, apologies.

when i do make that thread then at least it will help you all! i do think it's a big cultural difference UK/North America. I mean, so much of US TV has been amazing and transformative, culturally but the stuff that isn't that is unbearable whereas UK TV rarely hits those heights but is definitely good to watch, casually.

(sorry to go on but) i know from watching US scheduled TV with its endless ad breaks and recaps and teasers "in the last part"/"coming up after the break" could legit drive you crazy.

I haven't had cable in forever because I am super frugal and then if you don't get cable usually your regular tv doesn't work as well. And then I travel so much, whether a place has a tv or not is like a non-existant ammenity. And now that I mostly live in a South American country it's like netflix is what we choose to pay for (because we can't even get amazon prime shit down there) and having to pick from the super weird selection is fun. I am in the US right now and am amazed by the difference in what is available by country.

I am in my old apt right now in NY and my friend who live here have netflix, cable, hbo go, showtime, hulu, amazon prime and i guess youtube is free? It's weird. Like Why?

They used to make fun of me for never wanting to go out (if my pants were off, i was done for the night) but when I come home from work the tv is always on and they spend a half hour looking for something to watch. Again WHY? I don't know, I don't feel captive by my TV. And it's weird when people need it on to be in their house.

I've been able to dig up some good stuff lately on various streaming sites, and there's always cool stuff on YouTube, but I've made a rule not to bother watching anything if I'm not actually enthusiastic about it, and I feel like that's saved me a lot of useless time.

I watched six episodes of GLOW and found it quite bad. Not completely terrible, just not good and not believable and not very interesting in its badness and I think it's probably best to just not continue. I like Alison Brie a lot and she does the absolute best with what she's given.

yeah it really fell off quick. the first season is so good. what the fuck happened

oh wait are talking about the first season? if so, def don't stick around for season 2

I was talking about my attempts to engage with S1. I really did try.

Is S2 a real drop off? Only saw a few eps of S1 through being around other people watching it and it seemed decent, was under the impression it was a pretty well regarded show.

y’all are crazy it’s great

i liked season 2 as much as season 1. not sure why anyone wouldn't like this show

GLOW is great, both seasons

agreed

y’all are crazy it’s great

seriously wtf is wrong with the two of you

Liked S1, I tried the first few eps of season 2 and was turned off since they seemed to make Maron even more of a douche bag for the sake of plot. But I'll get back to it eventually

Slight side step, but did someone (Shakey?) in another thread say The Terror was streaming somewhere now? Not on Netflix but elsewhere.

glow is awesome wtf

The Terror is on amazon prime - I’m diggin it

If anything Maron is made way *more* sympathetic in GLOW season 2 (maybe too much so!)

kinda along the lines of the new rolling last x movies thread, is it time to start a new one for this?

Probably worth making a new thread often, considering that we gain/lose stuff on Netflix every week

I liked Glow in the end. It's clumsy and Maron's character does tend to flip-flop according to the needs of the plot, but it's got a good heart. And Alison Brie.

having loved the first season a LOT, we had to turn off american vandal s2 after about 90 seconds because it revolves around something tt is phobic of. way to go folks

Started the first ep of Maniac but wasn't really getting into it so switched over after about 10 min. and watched Land of Steady Habits instead, which is more my speed. And it had a Maniac actor in it! Plus the long-haired kid from Ozark. Lots of crossover in Netflix world. Really liked LoSH, Mendelsohn great as always and nice to see Edie Falco again.

I get a real Wild Palms vibe from Maniac.

having loved the first season a LOT, we had to turn off american vandal s2 after about 90 seconds because it revolves around something tt is phobic of. way to go folks

― imago, Saturday, September 29, 2018 2:16 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i was warned ahead of time and i can never watch it unfortunately

Season 2 is definitely gross.

And hilarious.

On the Netflix kid show tip, Hilda (adapted from Luke Pearson’s awesome Moomin meets Chris Ware style comic) is fantastic.

American Vandal s2 was so good. On par with s1 for sure.

Yeah Hilda is good

Just got Netflix but the app on my Samsung Smart TV doesn't work (iPlayer and Prime ones work fine). It's apparently a common problem - anyone else experienced it or know how to solve it? The ones I've found online so far haven't worked.

It's not a massive ballache as it works perfectly on the PS4 but it would be easier if we could just use the Smart TV app instead.

Land of Steady Habits was unsurprisingly great. Holofcener is remarkably consistent. Covers a lot of the same ground as the Meyerowitz Stories, for instance, but with better writing and acting.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before was ok--not as good as Love, Simon but as roughly good as Alex Strangelove and Every Day, as far as this year's (generally solid) crop of teen flicks go. I was actually surprised at how little the movie did with the premise; I wondered why they even bothered to contrive something so elaborate when the plot was a pretty basic "will she choose this guy or this guy" thing. The lead and Corbett were both charming, but the two guys were a bit too interchangeable (it took me a good half an hour to tell them apart; sorry Veg) and the girl who played the older sister was frankly awful, though thankfully not onscreen much. I liked that the best friend was hot for Justin Trudeau, and the implication that no one owns a television anymore: the kids in this movie watch The Golden Girls and Sixteen Candles on their laptops.

u_u

Nicole Holofcener has a new movie on Netflix for a month and I'm on hearing about it now?

yeah well, it's easily her worst movie so don't worry about it.

not on netflix but on amazon prime: Forever is really good. it's weird to be watching this concurrently with Kidding and see Catherine Keener on two shows at the same time (Kidding is also pretty good)