Streaming is evolving to give breakout stars like Richard Gadd an instant global audience.
In 2016 the comedian Richard Gadd spent August pounding a treadmill chased by a monkey and recounting a personal story of rape and sexual abuse.
So what? It was part of a one man show that won the Edinburgh Comedy Award and helped inspire Gadd’s next show, Baby Reindeer.
Baby Reindeer is now a Netflix word of mouth hit whose audience has grown faster than those of Squid Game or Stranger Things. Released last month, its viewership jumped from 10.4 million hours in its first week to nearly 53 million in its second. It combines both Gadd’s live shows, features accounts of being raped by a TV producer and stalked by a woman called Martha, and has prompted a vigilante hunt for his unnamed real-world assailants. It has also juiced Netflix’s bottom line.
One world, one water cooler. Ten years ago, an arthouse Edinburgh hit like Baby Reindeer might find its way to Channel 4 where it would be watched by perhaps a million people. Its Netflix viewer numbers are multiples of that and have made him an international star. “Never before have shows developed in a uniquely British way by a local team been released in all these markets around the world all at once,” says Tom Harrington of Enders Analysis. “With social media catching the world’s attention, when something becomes a hit it erupts like nothing else.”
Saving public Netflix. Netflix has had a torrid two years since its April 2022 results showed it losing subscribers for the first time in a decade. This time last year it was still in trouble with Wall Street, its shares slumping as revenue estimates fell. Last month its Q1 results added 9.3 million subscribers and beat analysts’ expectations with better-than-expected revenue at $9.49 billion, over forecasts of $8.73 billion.
It’s not just about the Reindeer. This growth hides a levelling off in subscriber numbers in mature markets like the UK and US. What’s rising is revenue from things like paid sharing – which limits password sharing – and new ad-supported streaming options.
A new Netflix model is evolving:
- Big, noisy hits like Reindeer (87 million more hours viewed this week) or 3 Body Problem (16 million) or The Gentlemen (15.1 million) bring people to the service.
- They stay for the Harry Potter movies (still the most viewed content on Netflix UK), or easy-to-graze staples like Friends and Seinfeld.
You might call it rope then dope.
Dad TV vs the Reindeer. Amazon Prime, Apple TV and Paramount + are going the other way – investing heavily in Dad TV, exemplified by shows like Reacher, Yellowstone and Red Eye, about men with intimacy issues and suppressed emotions solving unexpectedly large problems. Note – Dad TV defies formal definition but you know it when you see it. These are classic white hat/black hat action shows that don’t demand the audience watch five episodes before it gets good or have to invest in a new character in the 12th episode. “Most people don’t want to watch that sort of stuff when they’re tired,” says Harrington.
Cometh the Hour, cometh Eric. Late May sees the fusion of Reindeer and Dad in Eric, an Abi Morgan drama commissioned by Netflix UK starring Benedict Cumberbatch, set in New York at the height of the AIDs crisis. It’s about sleaze, corruption, homophobia, a missing child, disco music and a gay police officer trying to solve the problems of the world. It’s based on Morgan’s life, but the hero is a dad.
Can you plan an accidental meme hit? Netflix is giving it a shot.
