Netflix Repetitiveness Serious Problem

title: Stranger Things (2016-2021) imdb
created by: The Duffer Brothers


title: Dark (2017-2020) imdb
created by: Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese


title: Marianne (2019) imdb
created by: Samuel Bodin


title: Ragnarok (2020) imdb
created by: Adam Price


title: Curon (2020) imdb
created by: Ezio Abbate, Ivano Fachin, Giovanni Galassi, Tommaso Matano

Netflix seemed, only some years ago, the promised land for series lovers. One of the titles that promoted this feeling was the first season of Stranger Things. Only four years later, Netflix has become a factory of cloned shows. Teenager-oriented-horror is a perfect example of this. It doesn't matter what is the original language of a show (English, German, French, Norwegian or Italian) they all could have been made by the same authors. As a perfect parabole of globalization, what was supposed to bring together talent from around the World is, instead, homogenizing the different cultures it gets in touch with. The Netflix logo has become a synonym of soulless art and lack of personality.

All the series listed here take place in a small town/village. Three of them (Marianne, Ragnarok and Curon) start with some teenagers/youngsters going to this smaller town. In two of them (Ragnarok and Curon), it is a single mother with their children (like in Stranger Things), with a shy sibling and a rebel one. But although Stranger Things may seem the model for the Netflix fantasy genre, it is evident that Dark is the blueprint for the other European series.

Some of these shows manage to bring something interesting in the end (Curon gets quite interesting in the end), but they cannot escape the heavy shadow of repetition.

It is probably an indirect effect of how Netflix works: people who want to make shows approach Netflix with what they think Netflix wants; to be sure that Netflix will accept the project, they propose something they know "Netflix likes".

This presents a grim future. With the number of remarkable shows already diminishing every year, the growing presence of Netflix and its homogenizing effect is really worrisome, because probably other networks follow the same pattern, and also that the influence of Netflix will probably extend to traditional channels.

Read about what went wrong with the third season of Stranger Things here.