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Netlfix streaming recommendation: Parenthood
Parenthood is a TV series that I only discovered last week. One could summarize the show as a multi-generational and sprawling family soap opera. Or a continuing drama. Or comedy. Or something?. The first two seasons are available now on Netflix streaming.
But what places it beyond the ordinary is the truth of the acting and the non-cynical approach to story-telling. Watch an episode or two, and give it a chance. It is hard to believe that a family-based TV show could be as honestly engaging, given what passes for family drama these days. But this show is true and powerful and well worth a viewing.
I started watching after reading Emily Nussbaum’s recent piece in The New Yorker. After watching a few episodes, I have to agree with her:
Week after week, “Parenthood,” on NBC, risks corniness, tiptoes up to the edge of conventionality, then delivers real emotion. Its strength is arguably as valuable as the ability of other series to agitate their fans: it manages to be warm, even sentimental, without being stupid or stereotypical. Drama on TV continues to charm if given an honest chance.
In this respect, the show is not alone. There’s a quiet crest of similar sitcoms on network television, the best among them being “Parks and Recreation.” But “Parenthood,” since it’s a one-hour drama, can go deeper with its characters, mixing humor and pathos with a free hand. The series, which is based on the 1989 movie, was created by Jason Katims, whose first TV writing job was on Winnie Holzman’s “My So-Called Life.” That show’s one perfect season was produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creators of “thirtysomething.” And, really, for as long as I have been an adult, someone in the Herskovitz-Zwick orbit seems to have had a show on the air, generally on the verge of cancellation. In 1996, there was the short-lived “Relativity.” It was followed by three seasons of the low-rated “Once and Again”; the promising “Huge,” which was cancelled midseason last year; and, of course, Katims’s gorgeous Texas football-and-family series, “Friday Night Lights,” the one such show to be fully embraced by TV snobs. After getting bumped from NBC, “Friday Night Lights” ended its run, this summer, on DirecTV. “Parenthood” is still hanging in there on the network, but its season order was cut from twenty-two episodes to eighteen.
If it gets cancelled, I may never recover. The show has become stronger with each season, and ever more adroit at handling an ensemble so big and baggy that even the Waltons might have been intimidated.
Give it a viewing and see if you agree.
Related articles
- Emily Nussbaum: “Parenthood,” “Husbands” reviews. (newyorker.com)
- ‘Parenthood’ Makes A Tearful Return (huffingtonpost.com)
- NBC Orders More ‘Parenthood’ (aoltv.com)
New Absoutely Fabulous
Absolutely Fabulous is one of my favorite BBC comedies. And it is back, at least in the UK. New episodes begin on January 8.
Here is a teaser from the new series:
Related articles
- They’re Coming For The Kardashians (huffingtonpost.com)
- See The First Clip From The New Absolutely Fabulous, Sweetie [Video] (jezebel.com)
- Absolutely Fabulous news: it’s back (thestar.com)
Qwikster is dead
Netflix has backed down on its plan to separate its streaming and DVD business. According to Reed Hastings, there will continue to be one company and one website.
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
It was a stupid idea from the beginning. NFLX is up nearly 10% in pre-market trading.
Related articles
- Remember When Netflix Wanted To Rent DVDs On A Different Website? Yeah, That Was A Fun Week (techcrunch.com)
- Netflix drops plans to spin out DVDs under Qwikster (electronista.com)
- Netflix backtracks on Qwikster, will keep DVDs and streaming under the same URL (engadget.com)
- Netflix abandons Qwikster plan; shares soar (marketwatch.com)
Stephen on Steven
The Colbert Report
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A three screen strategy
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble writes that one of the most important parts of Apple’s announcement today will be the unveiling of an advance “three screen strategy,” relying on a convergence of the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV using Apple’s AirPlay technology. You can read his post, which I highly recommend, here, but you will need to scroll down a bit to get to the meat of his description of the “three screen strategy.”
While I doubt that Apple is calling this plan the “three screen strategy,” I do think that Scoble is right on in predicting the criticality to Apple of successfully deploying both its AirPlay technology and licensing deals with content providers. Apple needs to conquer the living room and the mobile space and iCloud plus AirPlay is the path to victory.
Apple has worked for years on its Apple TV “hobby” and, given the big moves in media distribution over the past few months by Netflix, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Spotify and others, now is the time for Apple to bring the pieces together in a compelling way. They have the talent and the reputation to do it. The only question is whether the media giants will play along or will block it despite their long-term best interests in wider paid distribution.
Related articles
- Rumors: Apple has iPad video app, no Jobs at Oct. 4 event (electronista.com)
- What is Apple AirPlay? Do you/Would you use it? (techburgh.com)
- Apple’s iPhone 5 key, but iCloud more strategic (zdnet.com)
Tech quote of the day
I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation.
– Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, apologizing for the manner of announcing the company’s recent price increases. The service is splitting into two services and Hastings provides the details here.
But the bottom line is that the two services really will be separate: different websites, different queues, separate entry of credit card info, and you would have to enter ratings of a single film on both sites. Further, it appears that you will not even be able to tell on the DVD site which movies are available for streaming. In other words, you would need to search twice for all movies and, even worse, if a movie not available for streaming when you add it to your Netflix queue, but becomes so later, will not show up on your streaming queue and will not show any indication on the Netflix queue that streaming is available.
This seems like a major loss of customer functionality to me, and one that should be manageable with the right technology design linking the two sites to provide the right information to customers to manage their subscription(s).
Related articles
- Netflix to split off DVD business; CEO apologizes (marketwatch.com)
- Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: ‘I messed up’ (gigaom.com)
- Netflix Makes HUGE Announcement (huffingtonpost.com)
Apple iPhone 5 stolen?
Maybe not stolen. Maybe simply lost. Here is one possible Apple response.
Fair and balanced
“Journalism” quote of the day
I do wish however that pundits would quit comparing the Murdoch phone-hacking clusterphuck to “a Shakespearean tragedy.” Despite the wealth, power, and magnitude of his media empire, Murdoch has no Lear depths and mind-tattered poetry; he’s a colorless king, mean and un-self-reflecting, his own chasms hidden from him. The ill he has done on several continents, the death toll from the wars his journalistic outlets have reflexively, ritualistically championed, the degradation of politics into hand-puppet psychodrama (Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, et al), cannot be undone by apologies proffered under duress. Without the exclusive about the phone hacking of Milly Dowler, he and News Corp probably would have gotten away with everything and gone smugly into the night. No, if the fall of the house of Murdoch is a tragedy, it’s the feel-good tragedy of the century. [One of the best tickers for keeping up with breaking developments in the phone-hacking clusterphuck is Eric Boehlert's Twitter feed, where the feuding with Andrew Breitbart is lagniappe.]
Related articles
- BLOOD BATH: WSJ Head Resigns Amidst Murdoch Phone-Hacking Scandal (businessinsider.com)
- ‘We are sorry’ Murdoch tells UK in full-page ad (thenewstribune.com)
- Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch’s US woes develop legs – Telegraph.co.uk (news.google.com)
FBI opens probe of News Corporation
More trouble for the Murdochs:
In the U.S., the FBI opened a probe into whether employees of News Corp. might have hacked or attempted to hack into the private calls, voice-mail messages or call records of 9/11 victims or their families, according to people familiar with the investigation. The probe was opened Thursday morning, following a request a day earlier by Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), who heads the House Homeland Security Committee and whose Long Island district was home to many victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
It will also look into whether any News Corp. employees bribed or sought to bribe police officials to gain access to such records.
Related articles
- FBI Opens News Corp. Hacking Probe (allthingsd.com)
- FBI to probe possible News Corp. hacking (news.nationalpost.com)
- FBI ‘to open 9/11 hack inquiry’ (bbc.co.uk)
Analyze your Netflix usage
Should you pay the increased ($16/month) Netflix fee for a combination 1 DVD/unlimited streaming plan? Here is a good way to check out whether it would be worth it for you, based on your historic Netflix usage. Note: When you get to the red-bordered image to approve access to your Netflix account, click the white space to the right of the”submit query” text.
Six strikes
The major ISPs have agreed with media companies to implement a “six strikes” program. Under the agreement, when content companies report to an ISP that they believe an ISP customer is accessing illegal content, the ISPs will implement a series of notices intended to get the customer to stop. Ultimately, the customer could be terminated by the ISP if they cease the activity.
The problem with this approach is that it is based merely on claims made by private companies, with no judicial oversight whatsoever. In effect, the ISPs become cops for the media industry and the media industry has the unilateral power to block (or severely degrade) service for those accused. Imagine if a private company could go to the phone company and accuse a customer of using his phone to commit a crime and demand that the phone company take action, including disconnecting the phone. Would we agree to that approach? Since when do private companies engage in law enforcement?
The Center for Democracy & Technology, along with Public Knowledge, said in a joint statement they were concerned about the accord. “We believe it would be wrong for any ISP to cut off subscribers, even temporarily, based on allegations that have not been tested in court,” the groups said.
Corynne McSherry, the intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also had concerns. She added, in a telephone interview, that the EFF was “pretty disappointed that ISPs have agreed to serve as a propaganda agent for big media.”
If a media company believes that a person has illegally stolen their content, the law provides existing remedies.
Related articles
- Should you fear new ISP copyright enforcers? (news.cnet.com)
- The Content Industry and ISPs Announce a “Common Framework for Copyright Alerts”: What Does it Mean for Users? (eff.org)
- White House: we “win the future” by making ISPs into copyright cops (arstechnica.com)
The Neflix secret (updated)
Image via CrunchBase
Analysts have been arguing for months that Netflix is over-valued, given that it creates (almost) no original content. Rather it merely bundles the output of the creative entertainment engines. Jonathan Knee, at the Atlantic, argues that the Netflix success story should really be no surprise. Content aggregators have long been more profitable than creators. Worth a full read.
In fact, the dirty little secret of the media industry is that content aggregators, not content creators, have long been the overwhelming source of value creation. Well before Netflix was founded in 1997, cable channels that did little more than aggregate old movies, cartoons, or television shows boasted profit margins many times greater than those of the movie studios that had produced the creative content. It is no coincidence that although, say, 90 percent of the public discourse surrounding Comcast’s recent $30 billion acquisition of NBC Universal involved the Conan O’Brien drama or the shifting fortunes of Universal Pictures, in reality, 82 percent of the new company’s profits come in through the cable channels.
Disclosure: I own Netflix stock.
Update: And while this should be no surprise, a new study concludes that heavy Netflix streaming customers are far more likely than others to be cord cutters.
The Diffusion Group released interesting research yesterday which supports a view that I’ve had for a while: heavy Netflix streaming usage correlates with a propensity to cut back on pay-TV services. Although Netflix has strenuously tried to position itself as a low-priced compliment to pay-TV services, the reality is that for some pay-TV subscribers who have begun shifting their viewing hours to Netflix streaming, the two are more substitutes than compliments. As I’ve argued, these are primarily people who are entertainment-oriented, don’t care about live sports, are comfortable with on-demand, not live-viewing, are budget-constrained, or some combination of all of these.
Related articles
- The Rise of Netflix and the Future of Home Entertainment (singularityhub.com)
- Will Anyone Ever Challenge Netflix? (fool.com)
- Netflix beefing up service center in preparation for global launch (engadget.com)
- Okay, Okay, Maybe Netflix Is a Problem for Cable After All (allthingsd.com)
Machines of loving grace
“All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” is a new BBC documentary series that is amazing. It is almost surreal and covers a broad territory, from Ayn Rand to Monica Lewinsky, if you can believe that. The first episode is below. Highly recommended.
(via Marginal Revolution)
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