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 had been shiny and watchable sufficient however insubstantial and forgettable – as epitomised by the Nicole Kidman thriller. This 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 sequence 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 sequence the place Nicole Kidman performed a rich girl who floated round in designer attire trying frightened as a result of her son went lacking (Expats), or the place she performed a rich girl who floated round in designer attire trying frightened as a result of somebody was murdered on her property (The Good Couple)?

If, maybe with a fast Google search as a immediate, you realise you did watch The Good Couple, it is a present that appears to encapsulate the place such interchangeable TV is at in 2024. The Good Couple burst onto Netflix in September, a soapy, shiny and foolish adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 novel of the identical title. With an honest solid – together with Kidman in a dodgy wig, Liev Schreiber, Meghann Fahy and Dakota Fanning – the six-episodes sequence 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 type in earnest or was this some type 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 tune Criminals that launched every episode; even Fahy advised Variety: “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 Good Couple,” says Manori Ravindran, a TV trade journalist who writes for The Ankler and Broadcast. “And all I can keep in mind about that now could be the dance, which, even after I was watching it, felt like a really orchestrated machine to make it stick in folks’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 Good Couple was the essence of a 2024 tv phenomenon: the rise of Mid TV. 

That time period was first coined by New York Instances journalist James Poniewozik in a piece for the publication in April 2024, the place he instructed that the so-called “Golden age of TV” was over. Gone had been the fascinating and artistic dramas of the mid-noughties that had 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 equivalent to Orange Is the New Black, BoJack Horseman and Clear.

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

Poniewozik expanded: “Mid is just not a strict style with a common definition. Nevertheless it’s what you get while you increase TV’s manufacturing values and decrease its ambitions. It reminds you a bit of one thing you as soon as preferred lots. It substitutes nice casting for excellent concepts… Mid is predicated on a well known ebook or film or homicide. Mid appears nice on an enormous display. Mid was shot on location in a number of nations. Mid in all probability might have been a pair episodes shorter. Mid is okay, although. It is adequate.”

“I believe it has been extraordinarily prevalent this 12 months,” Ravindran tells the BBC. “I’d 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 equivalent 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 Good 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 severely, regardless of revolving round a homicide case. She told Tudum: “Susanne [Bier, the director] had this actually sensible thought that if we had been to make use of a dance like that because the opening credit, it might inform folks straight away 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 experience.”

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

Definitely, the concept that we live in an age of Mid TV is supported by lots of the tepid reactions to the TV 12 months from critics. Inkoo Kang of The New Yorker says that till a couple of late arrivals on the finish of 2024, “I questioned whether or not I might have sufficient entries for a standard high 10 record”, whereas Jen Chaney at Vulture mentioned: “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 essential mass of viewers appeared equally enthusiastic about the identical sequence.” 

However, maybe Mid TV is just not essentially such a foul factor, argues TV critic and commentator Dan Barrett, who writes the publication Always Be Watching. “TV is definitely at its finest when it helps serve the perform that almost all viewers ask of it: they need TV to assist them calm down 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 youngsters. TV that pushes the boundaries and strives for excellence must be revered, however we should be higher at celebrating the TV that meets the viewer’s wants by putting that pleasant steadiness of being a bit sensible, 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 wonderful with lush manufacturing values, however are sometimes created by writers with restricted TV expertise,” says Barrett. “It leads to numerous 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 function 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 impression on the forms of exhibits they select to concentrate on. 2022 noticed what bankers Morgan Stanley described to the Financial Times as “the primary streaming recession”. Within the first quarter of 2022, Netflix revealed that they had lost 200,000 subscribers, whereas within the second quarter of the 12 months, they shed another 970,000, leaving them with 220.6 million subscribers in total. “It was a extremely cataclysmic occasion for the market,” says Ravindran. “Wall Avenue started making use of extra stress 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 by way of their backside strains, conserving their subscribers, and rising in a significant means.” 

Netflix, who had 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 function in January 2023 saying that the corporate’s technique for exhibits was to fee a “connoisseur cheeseburger”, ie, one thing “premium and industrial on the similar 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 could be feeling a little bit of deja vu round these samey, safe-bet sequence now: “What we will do is be at all times audience-centric: Who is that this present for? When you like this present, then we’re gonna offer you this different factor you want. When you do this, persons are gonna watch the exhibits, and all of these issues will assist the inventory.” 

Amazon Prime Video, in the meantime, had an even bigger content material spend than Netflix in 2023 at $18.9 billion, however is presently tied in first place with Netflix for market share in the US streaming market. Mid TV commissioning is working for them too, says Ravindran, as a result of they “need issues which can be really mainstream and can enchantment to folks in a number of totally different markets, whereas all the different streamers [including Netflix] are extra centered 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 got landed right here based mostly on monetary selections. “I do not agree that it’s a style,” he says. “If something, it is a budgeting pattern, and I believe the time period Mid TV is disrespectful to each the folks making the programmes and the folks watching them.”

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

It was notable, too, that considered 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, causing some online uproar. As some pointed out, 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 totally 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 robust from the so-called “earlier than occasions” is the flocking of Hollywood A-listers to the small display: Kidman has appeared in at least 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 may be much less pleasure round such signings, with big-name, award-winning expertise more and more approaching board for exhibits which can 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 folks. 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 pictures of fantastic furnishings and large kitchens. As Vinson Cunningham of The New Yorker noticed of The Good Couple: “[It] is doubling previous media – not critiquing it a lot as sporting its hand-me-downs and roughly 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 cannot cease.”

But when Mid TV is the brand new norm, then the place does this go away really status TV, the sort 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 sequence 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+, received extra Emmys than some other single season of TV in historical past and [Netflix series] Baby 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 had been laborious hit by the strikes, however issues like the Harry Potter show are going to be huge for them. Status TV will nonetheless exist, however shall be decreased, and I believe we’ll need to get used to returning exhibits centered round crime, hospitals and police procedurals.”

Barrett agrees: “The buzzword now could be to make ‘returnable dramas’ – exhibits which can 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 could be higher, as long as they’re effectively written and effectively solid.” 

Whether or not it is stuffed with episodic procedurals or shiny however insubstantial miniseries like The Good Couple, it looks like 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.