Netflix Orders 7 New British Series, including 'House of Guinness' & 'The Undertow'
Ten years into the streaming revolution, Netflix is still one of the primary leaders in global original programming. The company came in with something of an unfair advantage. As a tech company, it could live in debt for years without having to worry about turning a profit, allowing it to rack up 40, 50, and sometimes 60 originals per month every month. Not 60 original episodes, mind you; remember, despite the new trend of diving up popular reality shows and hot dramas into batches, most shows still arrive in binge format: 60 full series and films. Meanwhile Disney+, Apple TV+. HBO Max (now just Max), Peacock, and later Paramount+ were lucky if they could scrape together 20 episodes in a good month, let alone titles. But now, as peak TV subsides and Netflix has reached profitability, those numbers are starting to recede to something more manageable. For the 2024 "Next on Netflix," the streamer announced seven new U.K. originals heading into production, but all look to be winners.
One benefit of Netflix's spaghetti-to-the-wall decade of content production churn is that it has burned through many creatives and discovered who actually has the goods and who is merely out there claiming to be worth the money. Luckily, they have only had one Carl Rinsch incident; most of their failures have been more Ryan Murphy-style mismanagement. However, they have found a lot of talent who work well within their system, or better yet, whose shows work well when presented in the Netflix binge-watch model style after they were made for other networks, the Shonda Rimes of the U.K., as it were. (Her Grey's Anatomy, a broadcast series for ABC, is still Netflix's most-streamed show, even more than Bridgerton, which continues to be one of Netflix's flagship series.)
Nearly all of the upcoming shows Netflix is planning to produce in 2024 to stream in 2025 and beyond come from creatives who already have hits on the streaming service, including Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), Stephen Graham (Bodies), Matt Charman (Obsession), Guy Richie (The Gentlemen), Jamie Dornan (The Tourist), and See-Saw Films (the production house behind Heartstopper).
