Netflix’s The Perfect Couple and the reason TV was so poor in 2024 – but we watched anyway

This 12 months was outlined by a bunch of common TV exhibits that have been shiny and watchable sufficient however insubstantial and forgettable – as epitomised by the Nicole Kidman thriller. Here is why.

Because the 12 months involves an finish and everybody takes a glance again over 2024’s finest TV choices, for some there could also be a collective type of amnesia. What was that Apple TV+ crime collection with that massive actor in you watched – was it Presumed Harmless or Sugar? What was that good rom-com starring Adam Brody referred to as once more? Did you watch that collection the place Nicole Kidman performed a rich lady who floated round in designer clothes wanting anxious as a result of her son went lacking (Expats), or the place she performed a rich lady who floated round in designer clothes wanting anxious as a result of somebody was murdered on her property (The Excellent Couple)?

If, maybe with a fast Google search as a immediate, you realise you probably did watch The Excellent Couple, it is a present that appears to encapsulate the place such interchangeable TV is at in 2024. The Excellent Couple burst onto Netflix in September, a soapy, shiny and foolish adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 novel of the identical identify. With an honest solid – together with Kidman in a dodgy wig, Liev Schreiber, Meghann Fahy and Dakota Fanning – the six-episodes collection unravelled a homicide thriller set at an upper-class marriage ceremony in Nantucket. The tone of the present was off, barely; was the melodramatic telenovela-like model in earnest or was this some sort of satire on the homicide thriller style? It was unclear. Additionally shoe-horned in was a cringey all-cast dance routine on the seaside to Meghan Trainor’s music Criminals that launched every episode; even Fahy informed Selection: “Everybody [the actors] was saying they did not wish to do that as a result of we simply did not perceive.” The viewers lapped it up – it was most watched on Netflix’s TV chart for 2 weeks in a row – then it appeared to fade from reminiscence.  

“I had really forgotten I had watched The Excellent Couple,” says Manori Ravindran, a TV business journalist who writes for The Ankler and Broadcast. “And all I can bear in mind about that now’s the dance, which, even once I was watching it, felt like a really orchestrated gadget to make it stick in individuals’s minds; a visible factor to make a present memorable.” Whereas the dance gave the present a viral second on the time,  the drama as a complete did not encourage the identical cultural dialog. The Excellent Couple was the essence of a 2024 tv phenomenon: the rise of Mid TV. 

That time period was first coined by New York Occasions journalist James Poniewozik in a chunk for the publication in April 2024, the place he instructed that the so-called “Golden age of TV” was over. Gone have been the charming and artistic dramas of the mid-noughties that have been a masterclass in storytelling, like The Sopranos, Mad Males and Breaking Dangerous, which then led to streamers like Netflix and Amazon breaking additional artistic boundaries as they entered the market with exhibits akin to Orange Is the New Black, BoJack Horseman and Clear.

Now, Poniewozik argued, the small display screen is more and more being populated by exhibits that look good, are enjoyable to look at, and infrequently characteristic A-lister actors – however are the very dictionary definition of “good”, and as such are immediately forgettable. Reveals he positioned beneath this banner embrace the likes of Apple TV+’s Palm Royale and Platonic, Amazon’s Mr & Mrs Smith, and Peacock’s Poker Face.

Poniewozik expanded: “Mid isn’t a strict style with a common definition. But it surely’s what you get once you elevate TV’s manufacturing values and decrease its ambitions. It reminds you a bit of one thing you as soon as appreciated rather a lot. It substitutes nice casting for nice concepts… Mid relies on a well known e-book or film or homicide. Mid appears nice on a giant display screen. Mid was shot on location in a number of nations. Mid in all probability might have been a pair episodes shorter. Mid is ok, although. It is adequate.”

“I believe it has been extraordinarily prevalent this 12 months,” Ravindran tells the BBC. “I might characterise Mid TV as exhibits with massive stars, generic characters, well-trodden storylines; nothing distinctive and simply forgettable.”

With a glut of exhibits that might be classed as Mid TV hitting screens this 12 months, and with many of those coming from streamers akin to Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video, cynics may say that the choice to have its solid bopping on the seaside was certainly a transfer to make The Excellent Couple stand out from the opposite Mid exhibits of the time. Showrunner Jenna Lamia even signalled that it was there to point the present was not meant to be taken critically, regardless of revolving round a homicide case. She informed Tudum: “Susanne [Bier, the director] had this actually sensible thought that if we have been to make use of a dance like that because the opening credit, it might inform individuals immediately that, sure, this can be a homicide thriller, and sure, it is a thriller, however you are additionally going to have a lot enjoyable, so sit again and benefit from the journey.”

Nevertheless, Ravindran believes that Mid TV is one thing that viewers themselves have recognized as a phenomenon, reasonably than a concerted technique coming from TV makers. “I would not say Mid TV is one thing the business – producers, broadcasters and streamers – are essentially speaking about,” she says. “However from an viewers perspective, that is the way it’s obtained and it is fairly proper.” 

Actually, the concept we live in an age of Mid TV is supported by most of the tepid reactions to the TV 12 months from critics. Inkoo Kang of The New Yorker says that till just a few late arrivals on the finish of 2024, “I puzzled whether or not I might have sufficient entries for a standard high 10 checklist”, whereas Jen Chaney at Vulture stated: “It was stunning how a lot 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV period. There was nonetheless nice tv, however there was a lot extra mid or meh tv and much fewer distinctive choices or moments when a important mass of viewers appeared equally enthusiastic about the identical collection.” 

However, maybe Mid TV isn’t essentially such a foul factor, argues TV critic and commentator Dan Barrett, who writes the e-newsletter At all times Be Watching. “TV is definitely at its finest when it helps serve the perform that the majority viewers ask of it: they need TV to assist them loosen up and unwind,” he tells the BBC. “Whereas it is nice to have the ability to sit down and actually get caught right into a weighty, substantial drama, most viewing is finished after a protracted day at work or taking care of the children. TV that pushes the boundaries and strives for excellence ought to be revered, however we must be higher at celebrating the TV that meets the viewer’s wants by putting that pleasant steadiness of being a bit good, whereas additionally not being too taxing.”  

There are a number of causes that we have seen so many of those distinctly common exhibits about lately, consider Ravindran and Barrett. “The demand for such a excessive quantity of content material from the streaming providers has resulted in some huge cash spent on TV exhibits that look superb with lush manufacturing values, however are sometimes created by writers with restricted TV expertise,” says Barrett. “It leads to loads of TV that is not very memorable. The exhibits appear prestigious from the outset, however when you begin watching, in a short time you realise they’re 100-minute characteristic movie concepts stretched out to 8-10 hour-long episodes.”

On high of that, the straitened monetary state of affairs streamers have discovered themselves in lately has had an affect on the forms of exhibits they select to give attention to. 2022 noticed what bankers Morgan Stanley described to the Monetary Occasions as “the primary streaming recession”. Within the first quarter of 2022, Netflix revealed that they’d misplaced 200,000 subscribers, whereas within the second quarter of the 12 months, they shed one other 970,000, leaving them with 220.6 million subscribers in whole. “It was a extremely cataclysmic occasion for the market,” says Ravindran. “Wall Avenue started making use of extra strain on profitability. Earlier than that it was all about development: ‘Load up on the debt and simply see what occurs.’ However then after that it was an actual turning level for the streamers as there was extra accountability when it comes to their backside traces, conserving their subscribers, and rising in a significant means.” 

Netflix, who have been as soon as seen as disruptors and who pushed boundaries within the 2010s, modified tack: Netflix VP Jinny Howe was quoted in a New Yorker characteristic in January 2023 saying that the corporate’s technique for exhibits was to fee a “gourmand cheeseburger”, ie, one thing “premium and industrial on the identical time”, an outline that might be utilized to many Mid TV exhibits. In the identical article, Netflix Chief Content material Officer Bela Bajaria inadvertently defined why the viewers is perhaps feeling a little bit of deja vu round these samey, safe-bet collection now: “What we are able to do is be all the time audience-centric: Who is that this present for? Should you like this present, then we’re gonna provide you with this different factor you want. Should you try this, persons are gonna watch the exhibits, and all of these issues will assist the inventory.” 

Amazon Prime Video, in the meantime, had a much bigger content material spend than Netflix in 2023 at $18.9 billion, however is presently tied in first place with Netflix for market share within the US streaming market. Mid TV commissioning is working for them too, says Ravindran, as a result of they “need issues which might be actually mainstream and can attraction to individuals in a number of completely different markets, whereas the entire different streamers [including Netflix] are extra targeted on native tales as they need native hits in home markets that then construct out”. 

Jesse Whittock, worldwide TV co-editor at Deadline, takes umbrage with the time period Mid TV – he believes it’s offensive and reductive – however says that we’ve landed right here primarily based on monetary selections. “I do not agree that it’s a style,” he says. “If something, it is a budgeting development, and I believe the time period Mid TV is disrespectful to each the individuals making the programmes and the individuals watching them.”

“What we’ve seen is streaming providers transferring into the [network] TV house that may have [previously] been the one place for what some may name a sort of ‘background noise’ TV,” he provides, “which might be why we’re seeing extra of it. They’re doing that as a result of information tells them persons are watching these exhibits and since prices have needed to come down.”

It was notable, too, that certainly one of Netflix’s extra genuinely boundary-pushing exhibits this 12 months, the modernised Greek myths drama, Kaos, was swiftly cancelled after it launched in August, inflicting some on-line uproar. As some identified, it was commissioned means again in 2018, and arguably would not have been given the greenlight within the extra risk-averse panorama of 2024. “Pre-pandemic, the market was fully completely different, and was seeing commissions from Netflix left, proper and centre,” says Ravindran. “They’re nonetheless being digested and labored out of the system, in a means.”

One factor that’s nonetheless going sturdy from the so-called “earlier than occasions” is the flocking of Hollywood A-listers to the small display screen: Kidman has appeared in a minimum of three exhibits this 12 months, whereas the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett have all taken on their first main TV function. However nowadays, there’s much less pleasure round such signings, with big-name, award-winning expertise more and more approaching board for exhibits which might be fairly generic and/or just underwhelming.

One other phenomenon tied to Mid TV that has change into wearying for some is the sheer amount of exhibits dedicated to the exploits of super-rich individuals. A few of these exhibits like The White Lotus or Succession have explored these environs meaningfully with dramatic or comedic chunk. However there’s an growing variety of pale imitators that notionally gesture at saying one thing about wealth and privilege whereas actually simply utilizing an “eat the wealthy” theme as an excuse to enjoy photographs of wonderful furnishings and large kitchens. As Vinson Cunningham of The New Yorker noticed of The Excellent Couple: “[It] is doubling previous media – not critiquing it a lot as sporting its hand-me-downs and kind of pulling off the look.” 

Mid TV, whether or not an acknowledged phenomenon or not, is working for the streamers. And it is working for viewers: we’re watching these exhibits, in any case. As Cunningham provides: “[It’s] like [when] Lynyrd Skynyrd performs Free Hen or Billy Joel performs Piano Man: as a result of we’re all asking for it, and since we can’t cease.”

But when Mid TV is the brand new norm, then the place does this depart actually status TV, the type that critics have salivated over for the reason that starting of the “golden age of TV” all these years in the past?  We should not fear an excessive amount of, says Whittock. Amongst all the numerous collection thrown out throughout the streamers, “There are edgy and status programmes launching on a regular basis and discovering success. Shōgun, a Japanese-language historic drama for Disney+, gained extra Emmys than some other single season of TV in historical past and [Netflix series] Child Reindeer, a wild story from a Scottish slapstick comedian about psychological well being, is arguably the 12 months’s most-talked about present.”

“HBO shall be again in a significant means subsequent 12 months,” predicts Ravindran. “They have been exhausting hit by the strikes, however issues just like the Harry Potter present are going to be huge for them. Status TV will nonetheless exist, however shall be diminished, and I believe we’ll should get used to returning exhibits targeted round crime, hospitals and police procedurals.”

Barrett agrees: “The buzzword now’s to make ‘returnable dramas’ – exhibits which might be extra [in] the old-school [episodic] TV format the place plots are established and resolved in a single episode, with viewers capable of decide up a present at any episode and have a satisfying viewing expertise.”

Jackson McHenry of Vulture famous the transfer in the direction of this format in his publication’s end-of-year round-up, too, writing: “I’ve given in to the ability of the procedural, and I believe tv has, too… This 12 months, as status TV contracted, some tv producers decided that the outdated methods is perhaps higher, as long as they’re properly written and properly solid.” 

Whether or not it is filled with episodic procedurals or shiny however insubstantial miniseries like The Excellent Couple, it looks as if we might be in for a much less creatively thrilling period of TV forward. But when that is what audiences need – and what makes streamers financially sustainable – then critics’ complaints could fall on deaf ears.